The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) says it wel­comes the sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing in var­i­ous sec­tors such as Health, Agri­cul­ture, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and So­cial De­vel­op­ment as an­nounced in the mid-year bud­get re­view yes­ter­day.

But the as­so­ci­a­tion is ask­ing Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to pro­vide salary re­lief grants to just un­der half of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor’s 53,000 em­ploy­ees who it said are al­so “ad­verse­ly” af­fect­ed by COVID-19.

In a state­ment af­ter the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance pre­sent­ed the mid-year re­view, the TM­MA said giv­en the so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic it is pleased with the de­ci­sions an­nounced.

In the state­ment, the TTMA said, “We are es­pe­cial­ly pleased on the sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing that is to be pro­vid­ed to ad­dress the pan­dem­ic in­clud­ing ad­di­tion­al pro­vi­sion of TTD $267 mil­lion to the Min­istry of Health (MOH) to as­sist in the roll­out of the na­tion­al vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme. This fund­ing is cru­cial to ad­dress the present COVID-19 pan­dem­ic sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The TTMA said it al­so not­ed the ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing be­ing of­fered un­der the Salary Re­lief Pro­gramme, the ex­ten­sion of the En­tre­pre­neur­ial Re­lief Grant un­der NED­CO and the ex­ten­sion of the Cred­it Union Pro­gramme.

It said it looks for­ward to the con­tin­ued sup­port be­ing of­fered to Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) and the out­reach pro­gramme to be pro­vid­ed to SMEs.

It said, “With the in­tro­duc­tion of this ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing, TTMA looks for­ward for Gov­ern­ment’s con­sid­er­a­tion on salary grants for the Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sec­tor. To date, this sec­tor rep­re­sents 53,000 work­ers of which ap­prox­i­mate­ly 47 per cent are af­fect­ed ad­verse­ly, in some form or fash­ion, be­cause busi­ness­es are not al­lowed to re­main opened, and or cur­tailed be­cause of the present re­stric­tions un­der the State of Emer­gency.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion added there is al­so the im­me­di­ate need to ad­dress the VAT re­fund de­lays busi­ness­es are present­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing once again, thus al­le­vi­at­ing cash flow chal­lenges, es­pe­cial­ly for busi­ness­es be­long­ing to the SME sec­tor.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the TTMA said while it ap­pre­ci­ates the as­sis­tance re­ceived last year to al­low in­jec­tions in­to the flow of VAT re­turns, the bot­tle­necks are build­ing up again. It said there is a need to ad­dress this mat­ter on a sus­tain­able lev­el and thus, “we are ask­ing for con­sid­er­a­tion of rec­om­men­da­tions of Net Off, and or re­moval of VAT on im­port­ed Raw Ma­te­r­i­al as a means to re­solv­ing the mat­ter on a per­ma­nent ba­sis. “

The TTMA said it looks for­ward to fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the Min­is­ter’s pre­sen­ta­tion when avail­able and wel­comes con­sul­ta­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gov­ern­ment with re­spect to the Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sec­tor.