Yvonne Ba­boolal

Cau­tious hope. This seems to be the re­ac­tion of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to the Gov­ern­ment's 2012 bud­get. Un­less the Gov­ern­ment can cre­ate in­vestor con­fi­dence, its in­cen­tives to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty will amount to lit­tle, says Ibrahim Ali, pres­i­dent of the San Juan Cham­ber of Com­merce. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said last Sat­ur­day that the of­fer­ing of in­cen­tives to cre­ate in­vestor con­fi­dence was part of the new bud­get. "Right now in­ter­est rates at the bank are low but busi­ness peo­ple are not tak­ing new loans," Ali told the Guardian yes­ter­day. "There is a lack of con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my." He claimed that in­cen­tives of­fered in the last bud­get were not ac­cept­ed by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al.

"They of­fered in­cen­tives for the ho­tel in­dus­try and the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor but no­body took them up," Ali said. He said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty re­mains un­cer­tain be­cause of mixed mes­sages it is get­ting from the Cen­tral Bank and the Min­istry of Fi­nance: "One minute we are hear­ing the econ­o­my is down, the oth­er we are hear­ing it is grow­ing. "The Gov­ern­ment must paint a good pic­ture that they can re­vi­talise the econ­o­my." Ali said while the state of emer­gency (SoE) is not a prob­lem, the cur­few has vir­tu­al­ly shut down night-time busi­ness­es which, in turn have been cre­at­ing a trick­le-down ef­fect on oth­er as­pects of the busi­ness sec­tor.

Pres­i­dent of the Pt Lisas/Cou­va Cham­ber of Com­merce Nal Ram­s­ingh, said: "Every­thing de­pends on what the Gov­ern­ment ac­tu­al­ly does. "I am hop­ing that jobs cre­at­ed by sig­nif­i­cant in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment and hous­ing con­struc­tion will help stim­u­late the econ­o­my. "Work in the hous­ing sec­tor has vir­tu­al­ly stopped. All over the coun­try you are see­ing hous­es that are half-fin­ished." Com­mend­ing Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath for do­ing an ex­cel­lent job, Ram­s­ingh said more needs to be done in this area.

He said many for­mer sug­ar cane work­ers who were giv­en two-acre plots are not do­ing any­thing with the land be­cause they have lit­tle in­cen­tive: "The Gov­ern­ment needs to of­fer them more in­cen­tives to plant the land." Ram­s­ingh al­so said the cur­few was not do­ing the lo­cal busi­ness sec­tor any good.

"They could leave the SoE and take off the cur­few," he sug­gest­ed. "The SoE gives the po­lice the pow­ers of ar­rest but we don't need the cur­few. It's af­fect­ing busi­ness bad­ly." Ram­s­ingh said KFC work­ers are forced to go home ear­li­er than usu­al and some may end up home per­ma­nent­ly be­cause of the cur­few hours. Restau­rants, bars, fac­to­ries, taxi dri­vers are al­so suf­fer­ing from re­duced in­comes, as a re­sult, he said.

Bil­ly Ali, pres­i­dent of the Greater Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce said projects and in­cen­tives are good, but the Gov­ern­ment al­so needs to look at ef­fi­cien­cy in spend­ing, wastage and what tax­pay­ers are get­ting out of their mon­ey. He said repet­i­tive road paving which brings tremen­dous cost to the Gov­ern­ment needs to be avoid­ed. "The roads end up be­ing high­er than the side­walk and then they have to pay con­trac­tors to lift the side­walk. "We have to pay care­ful at­ten­tion to how we spend mon­ey." Ali said more at­ten­tion is need­ed in the ar­eas of sports, tourism and agri­cul­ture. He said there are ar­eas that al­so need fix­ing since time im­memo­r­i­al which frus­trate cit­i­zens on a dai­ly ba­sis. "These ar­eas are the Li­cenc­ing, VAT, Board of In­land Rev­enue of­fices, Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms," he said.