The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is gen­er­al­ly pleased with the 2012/2013 bud­get and is call­ing on Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er to do what he promised and re­duce crime. In an e-mailed re­sponse to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Tri­cia Hen­ry, mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at TTCIC, said: "As crime con­tin­ues to be a main is­sue that sti­fles busi­ness in­vest­ment and a way of life, its im­por­tance re­mains a key fo­cus in this year's bud­get and we await the holis­tic ap­proach to com­bat­ing crime which the cham­ber has been call­ing for and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has promised to de­liv­er short­ly.

"In the face of glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, there must be em­pha­sis on eco­nom­ic growth. We ap­plaud the ef­forts of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my to pro­vide some de­gree of stim­u­lus to achieve this growth in this year's bud­get. "Giv­en our low rank­ing in the 2012 Com­pet­i­tive­ness and Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness in­dices, we are pleased that some mea­sures for im­prov­ing our busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness have been in­clud­ed." Hen­ry said the cham­ber al­so ex­pressed re­lief that an amend­ment to the Ex­che­quers Act would al­low for Gov­ern­ment to ac­cept and make elec­tron­ic pay­ments and the ad­vance sub­mis­sion of elec­tron­ic in­for­ma­tion for clear­ing of car­go.

The cham­ber was less thrilled about oth­er as­pects of the bud­get. "The cost of the fu­el sub­sidy has been talked about for sev­er­al years and we had hoped that this bud­get would have made greater strides to ad­dress this," she added.

The in­crease in the pre­mi­um fu­el price would rep­re­sent a min­i­mal re­duc­tion in the fu­el sub­sidy but would en­cour­age dri­vers to con­vert to CNG, she said. "The cham­ber looks for­ward to be­ing in­clud­ed in the con­sul­ta­tion process in the up­com­ing year to re­view the ad­di­tion­al mea­sures aimed at fur­ther ad­dress­ing and re­duc­ing the cur­rent lev­els of sub­sidy and in par­tic­u­lar the sub­sidy on diesel," she con­tin­ued. The cham­ber al­so said it was hap­py to see CEPEP and URP move from de­pen­den­cy to sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment in the pri­vate sec­tor. She said: "We com­mend the Gov­ern­ment for giv­ing in­cen­tives to the pri­vate sec­tor to stim­u­late the growth of the con­struc­tion sec­tor. "How­ev­er we would like to see the ease of do­ing busi­ness ap­ply to the ap­proval process of the many reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies which would al­low con­struc­tion projects to be com­plet­ed with­in the time­frame an­nounced by the min­is­ter. "The al­lo­ca­tion to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has in­creased and we wel­come the plans to build a com­pet­i­tive econ­o­my, fo­cused on tourism for To­ba­go. "While we are aware that the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Fund and Gov­ern­ment loan guar­an­tee have been ap­proved, we be­lieve that the process is tak­ing an un­due length of time for im­ple­men­ta­tion," she added.