Pe­ter Christo­pher

Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al has wel­comed the Bud­get mea­sures pro­posed to as­sist the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly those geared to as­sist­ing small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs).

She said the TTMA was al­so heart­ened to learn the Gov­ern­ment will be seek­ing to ad­dress out­stand­ing VAT re­funds.

How­ev­er, Coos­al yes­ter­day said, “The as­so­ci­a­tion will be look­ing to­ward the de­tails on this mat­ter, since find­ing a long term so­lu­tion to this prob­lem is just as im­por­tant for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as ob­tain­ing their over­due al­lo­ca­tion of VAT re­turns.”

Coos­al added, “The ad­di­tion­al an­nounced Phase 2 of the Small and Medi­um En­ter­prise Loan Guar­an­tee Pro­gramme with the com­mer­cial banks would pro­vide much-need­ed liq­uid­i­ty for SMEs. Fur­ther, the ex­ten­sion of Gov­ern­ment’s guar­an­tee of 100 per cent of the prin­ci­pal bor­rowed and ex­ten­sion of re­pay­ment from five to sev­en years gives SMEs greater abil­i­ty to take the nec­es­sary risks need­ed at this time. The an­nounce­ment that this fund can now be used to pur­chase fixed as­sets, in­clud­ing goods and ve­hi­cles, will al­low com­pa­nies to in­vest in digi­ti­sa­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and up­grad­ed equip­ment that will as­sist in ef­fi­cien­cy and out­put of their busi­ness­es.”

Coos­al called the five per cent re­duc­tion of the tax rate on in­vest­ment in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion “a wel­comed ini­tia­tive that has the po­ten­tial for di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my.”

She al­so praised the Cat­alyt­ic Fund, not­ing the al­lo­ca­tion of $50 mil­lion to­wards pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and sup­port in the ar­eas of front of­fice ca­pac­i­ties for SMEs, such as record keep­ing, train­ing, man­age­ment and health and safe­ty, will serve to strength­en these busi­ness­es to be­come sound ex­porters on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

Coos­al con­tin­ued, “The re­quest for and the grant­i­ng of the ex­ten­sion of the For­eign Ex­change fa­cil­i­ty at EX­IM Bank would fu­el in pro­vid­ing an im­pe­tus for busi­ness op­er­a­tors to ac­cess much need­ed for­eign ex­change. In 2020 and 2021, this vi­tal in­jec­tion as­sist­ed the non-en­er­gy com­mu­ni­ty great­ly and it is high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed with the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued sup­port in this re­gard, it would serve as an in­te­gral tool in the sus­te­nance and growth of the ex­ports from lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers. The Min­is­ter’s state­ment high­lights the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to sup­port TTMA’s strate­gic plan to dou­ble ex­ports by 2025.”

Coos­al said the as­so­ci­a­tion was pleased with the min­is­ter’s con­fi­dence in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

“The recog­ni­tion giv­en to the man­u­fac­tur­ers as the “cat­a­lyst for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion” in the post-pan­dem­ic fu­ture to en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go is glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive and in­no­v­a­tive is well re­ceived. The im­por­tance of en­sur­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness was once again stressed by the Min­is­ter via the pledge of digi­ti­sa­tion, through the strength­en­ing of the Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Win­dow and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the elec­tron­ic fund trans­fer frame­work to al­low busi­ness­es to make pay­ments to the Gov­ern­ment. We al­so wel­come the en­hance­ment of the vol­un­tary com­pli­ance pro­gramme at the port, which will al­low clear­ance of goods to be fast-tracked and look for­ward to the de­tails as they be­come avail­able,” she said.

Coos­al al­so praised the Na­tion­al Vo­ca­tion­al Train­ing Pro­gramme for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor along­side a Na­tion­al Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme, not­ing the TTMA has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with UWI in re­la­tion to that.

The TTMA said it was look­ing for­ward to the roll­out of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, as the as­so­ci­a­tion has “recog­nised the im­por­tance of widen­ing the tax net as op­posed to fur­ther bur­den­ing the al­ready com­pli­ant pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try.”