T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al says while they are heart­ened by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment of the pay­ment of Val­ue-added Tax (VAT) re­funds, she hopes a more long-term so­lu­tion can be de­rived.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter Im­bert de­liv­ered his Mid-Year Bud­get re­view, Coos­al said, “The TTMA is heart­ened by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s an­nounce­ment of the pay­ment of VAT re­turns of $4 bil­lion for fis­cal 2022-2023, with an in­jec­tion of $1.6 bil­lion for April-Sep­tem­ber 2022. The as­so­ci­a­tion has been ad­vo­cat­ing for these re­turns for our mem­bers for some time.”

Coos­al said the pay­ments will help mem­bers, es­pe­cial­ly the Small and Medi­um-sized en­ter­prise (SME) sec­tor, with their cash flow chal­lenges, al­low­ing them to pur­chase scarce re­sources, oth­er in­puts and in­vest in man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions for feed­ing the econ­o­my, man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­pan­sion, for­eign ex­change earn­ings and em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion.

How­ev­er, she said the TTMA looks for­ward to a long-term so­lu­tion of the VAT re­bate frame­work to al­le­vi­ate a peren­ni­al build-up of re­turns, adding they are ready to dis­cuss so­lu­tions with the au­thor­i­ties.

On the in­tro­duc­tion of res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax by De­cem­ber 31, Coos­al said TTMA “looks for­ward to open­ing di­a­logue with the Gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss the frame­work for the even­tu­al im­ple­men­ta­tion of prop­er­ty tax on com­mer­cial prop­er­ty with the goal of ex­emp­tion of tax on plant and ma­chin­ery.”

She al­so com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment on work done to sta­bilise the econ­o­my, which she said has po­si­tioned T&T to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.

“The TTMA wel­comes the pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tors for 2022 as high­light­ed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, in­ter alia, sta­bil­i­sa­tion and re­duc­tion of pub­lic debt, Gov­ern­ment’s over­draft with Cen­tral Bank at 50 per cent, debt to GDP de­creased to 77 per cent and the in­crease of the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct of the coun­try,” Coos­al said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said these fac­tors sug­gest eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment.

“Im­por­tant­ly, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance stressed the in­crease in GDP is a re­sult of sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive move­ment of a num­ber of sec­tors of the econ­o­my, in­clud­ing the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to sur­pass pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els,” Coos­al not­ed.

She said the TTMA will con­tin­ue to work with the Trade Min­istry and its mem­bers to con­tin­ue this up­ward tra­jec­to­ry, “plac­ing it along a path of sus­tain­able growth and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.”

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS