The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is wel­com­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s bud­get an­nounce­ment to ex­empt man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies who are ex­port­ing and fall with­in the 30 per cent tax brack­et from busi­ness levy - name­ly those com­pa­nies whose gross re­ceipts fall with­in the 30 per cent tax brack­et.

Re­spond­ing to the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day evening, the TTMA’s pres­i­dent Roger Roach said in a state­ment that the as­so­ci­a­tion looks for­ward to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this mea­sure by Jan­u­ary 2024, as stat­ed by the min­is­ter, not­ing it re­quires an amend­ment to the Cor­po­ra­tion Tax Act.

“TTMA wel­comes the ap­proval of four e-mon­ey is­suers and the ex­pan­sion of the sin­gle win­dow elec­tron­ic win­dow. The dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of Gov­ern­ment ser­vices for on­line pay­ment to an ad­di­tion­al 14 Gov­ern­ment ser­vices and the col­lec­tion of tax­es are all com­mend­able ini­tia­tives by the Gov­ern­ment. The im­ple­men­ta­tion of these an­nounce­ments are im­por­tant tools for im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness and TTMA will mon­i­tor the im­ple­men­ta­tion of these on­line pay­ment por­tals,” Roach stat­ed.

The TTMA pres­i­dent al­so men­tioned man­u­fac­tur­ers have ex­pe­ri­enced ab­nor­mal­ly long Cus­toms de­lays with a two - three week Cus­toms ap­point­ment time at some bonds and tran­sit sheds to ex­am­ine car­go, which in turn has a sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive im­pact on trade and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

“The pur­chase of 16 hand­held and 4 large fixed in­spec­tion scan­ners will speed up the in­spec­tion of items at the port and move­ment of goods on the ports. TTMA is hope­ful that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of these ad­di­tion­al scan­ners will re­sult in a re­duc­tion in rent and de­mur­rage charges in­curred by man­u­fac­tur­ers at present,” Roach em­pha­sised.

He said the glob­al ex­ter­nal forces which af­fect man­u­fac­tur­ers have sta­bilised, how­ev­er, Roach said every­one must con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor how fac­tors with­in the coun­try af­fect busi­ness.

“It is there­fore im­por­tant that the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues work­ing with the Pri­vate Sec­tor to en­sure the ease of do­ing busi­ness in­di­ca­tors are im­proved and al­low for the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness to sus­tain and grow in the com­pet­i­tive glob­al en­vi­ron­ment in which they are asked to com­pete,” the TTMA head ex­plained.

He not­ed the move by the Gov­ern­ment to main­tain and ex­pand the FX frame­work at the EX­IM Bank is wel­comed and at the same time, im­ple­ment the Small and Medi­um Sized En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) for­eign ex­change fa­cil­i­ty which is an­tic­i­pat­ed to re­duce the use of cred­it card us­age by small busi­ness­es.

Roach al­so ex­pressed his con­tent­ment with in­cen­tives at a val­ue of $1.442 bil­lion be­ing of­fered for the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor as this will dri­ve the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust and as­sist in de­creas­ing the food im­port bill of $5 bil­lion per an­num.