Val­ue-added tax (VAT) re­funds amount­ing to al­most $144 mil­lion con­tin­ue to be the biggest prob­lem for man­u­fac­tur­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ing the liq­uid­i­ty of Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (SMEs), and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is hop­ing that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert will present some good news dur­ing his mid-year bud­get re­view to be de­liv­ered in Par­lia­ment to­mor­row.

In an emailed re­sponse, TTMA’s Pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that to date ap­prox­i­mate­ly 65 of its mem­bers are owed re­funds.

How­ev­er, she not­ed, “This num­ber on­ly re­flects the feed­back we have got­ten from our mem­bers thus far.

Dur­ing these very chal­leng­ing times, VAT re­funds are ex­treme­ly cru­cial to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Busi­ness­es are do­ing all that they can to stay open and the sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment is vi­tal in the equa­tion.”

She em­pha­sised that these monies are right­ful­ly owed to busi­ness­es, call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to do its part as she al­so not­ed that most of these re­funds have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed for a num­ber of years.

But she said the TTMA is work­ing with rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to have the mat­ter ad­dressed, not just in the short-term, but on a long-term ba­sis as well.

Ac­cord­ing to Coos­al, this en­tailed not just mak­ing one-off pay­ments but find­ing holis­tic so­lu­tions to re­solve the “build up of the prob­lem” oc­cur­ring over time.

The wor­ry­ing crime sit­u­a­tion was an­oth­er fac­tor iden­ti­fied as need­ing ur­gent at­ten­tion.

Coos­al said the es­ca­la­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties con­tin­ues to be a grave con­cern for her mem­bers, warn­ing that if left unchecked this will like­ly have a “dis­as­trous im­pact on com­pa­nies and their abil­i­ty to op­er­ate in a cost-ef­fec­tive man­ner as this has a cor­re­spond­ing in­crease in the cost of do­ing busi­ness and such in­crease can erode com­pet­i­tive­ness.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the ease of do­ing busi­ness, and in­ef­fi­cien­cies at some bor­der agen­cies and pub­lic en­ter­pris­es were cit­ed as oth­er is­sues to be tack­led by Gov­ern­ment.

Coos­al not­ed that the in­creas­ing cost of ship­ment re­mains a ma­jor im­ped­i­ment for im­porters of fin­ished goods as well as im­porters of raw ma­te­r­i­al.

The TTMA’s Pres­i­dent said the cur­tail­ment of sup­plies is al­so a sig­nif­i­cant im­ped­i­ment for man­u­fac­tur­ers need­ing to meet their pro­duc­tion and ex­port de­mands.

Say­ing that all these is­sues are be­ing dis­cussed Coos­al ar­gued that the TTMA is hope­ful that col­lec­tive­ly, in­no­v­a­tive ways can be found to as­sist mem­bers in do­ing busi­ness op­ti­mal­ly in T&T.

But she said some of the prob­lems are “ex­oge­nous in na­ture,” and thus are not eas­i­ly reme­died.

The TTMA wants Gov­ern­ment to pri­ori­tise leg­is­la­tion for the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill, E-Com­merce Leg­is­la­tion, Gov­ern­ment Pro­cure­ment specif­i­cal­ly in the area of lo­cal con­tent and re­vi­sion of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act.

Re­gard­ing tax­a­tion, the TTMA wants a more ef­fi­cient col­lect­ing mech­a­nism by in­clud­ing more peo­ple in the net as op­posed to in­creas­ing tax­es on the al­ready com­pli­ant pop­u­la­tion, Coos­al rec­om­mend­ed.

“In this re­gard we are al­so ap­peal­ing to Gov­ern­ment to not con­sid­er the ap­pli­ca­tion of prop­er­ty tax on plant and ma­chin­ery, if and when con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en to the ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty of the prop­er­ty tax frame­work be­yond res­i­den­tial pur­pos­es,” she ex­plained.

And re­gard­ing ef­forts to en­hance the ease of do­ing busi­ness, she said the TTMA would like a “strate­gic plan” to ad­dress some of these con­cerns.

While not­ing the ef­forts of the Trade Min­istry, Coos­al said the TTMA would like “tan­gi­ble re­sults” where trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion en­ti­ties are more “op­ti­mal” in the way they en­gage busi­ness.

She ad­vised that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion needs to be prop­er­ly out­fit­ted/re­sourced to han­dle the grow­ing busi­ness op­er­a­tions in the coun­try.

Coos­al added that the ports need to be “much more op­ti­mal” in their op­er­a­tions and func­tions as well as oth­er bor­der agen­cies need to be prop­er­ly re­sourced.

“The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty can­not be seek­ing to sus­tain and grow op­er­a­tions, while the sup­port­ing arms are not piv­ot­ing to keep strides in ef­fi­cien­cies that are need­ed to al­low com­pa­nies to com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly in an ever-ad­vanc­ing glob­alised world,” Coos­al stressed.

Ac­cord­ing to Coos­al, the TTMA has been work­ing to con­tin­ue to sta­bilise and grow the sec­tor, not­ing that it has made sig­nif­i­cant strides name­ly the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of com­pa­nies dur­ing the last 12 months.

She ex­plained that busi­ness­es were able to keep their doors open and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Trade, Ex­im Bank (Jan­u­ary 2021 to March 2022 US$187.7 mil­lion was sold) and ex­porTT, mem­bers ac­cessed scarce re­sources to pur­chase raw ma­te­r­i­al and in­puts in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing.

This Coos­al added, en­abled them to con­tin­ue to run their en­ti­ties, keep peo­ple em­ployed, feed the na­tion­al econ­o­my and more im­por­tant­ly, gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change for T&T.

She said the TTMA’s leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee close­ly mon­i­tored the roll-out of the SME Loan Fa­cil­i­ty in 2020 and ad­vo­cat­ed for a re­vi­sion of the re­quire­ments and ex­ten­sion of the pro­gramme at the be­gin­ning of 2021.

“The re­quest was made based on feed­back from mem­bers on their in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess the fa­cil­i­ty due to the rig­or­ous and oner­ous ap­pli­ca­tion process stip­u­lat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment,” Coos­al ex­plained.

She not­ed that tak­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the pri­vate sec­tor in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance thus al­tered the re­quire­ments need­ed to ap­ply and re­vised the terms and con­di­tions to make it more ac­ces­si­ble to mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

Hence, Phase II of the pro­gramme ti­tled the “MSME Stim­u­lus Loan Pro­gramme” was of­fi­cial­ly launched in De­cem­ber 2021.

To date, Coos­al said, there have been 100 suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20M in dis­burse­ments, adding that the fa­cil­i­ty will re­main avail­able un­til June 2022.

The TTMA Pres­i­dent said the sec­tor had suc­cess in com­bat­ing il­lic­it trade due to the co­he­sive ef­forts of law en­force­ment agen­cies, say­ing that 2021 saw “quite a num­ber of seizures” in il­lic­it prod­ucts in­clud­ing arms and am­mu­ni­tion, wrap­ping pa­per, drugs, cig­a­rettes, al­co­hol, lux­u­ry prod­ucts, sub­stan­dard phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and elec­tron­ics.

These items were seized at ports, homes and com­mer­cial es­tab­lish­ments Coos­al said, adding that for the first time two re­tail­ers were pros­e­cut­ed.

Last­ly, the TTMA pres­i­dent cit­ed that sta­tis­tics of the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor have been favourable—year-to-date 2021 rel­a­tive 2020.

This, Coos­al said, is in­dica­tive of the work TTMA has been do­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Trade Min­istry and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions to se­cure mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties.

These gains, Coos­al fur­ther ex­plained re­sult­ed from var­i­ous mis­sions held by the TTMA in the last 12 months (Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Suri­name, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Cu­ra­cao to name a few) as well as oth­er mea­sures such as the Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive.