With the 2012 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to be pre­sent­ed by Sep­tem­ber, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has al­ready be­gan pre­sent­ing its pro­pos­als to the Gov­ern­ment, with the hope that some of its re­peat­ed rec­om­men­da­tions are heed­ed. The Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) says while it is pleased to be part of the na­tion­al 2011/2012 bud­get plan­ning process, it not­ed that many of its rec­om­men­da­tions were made re­peat­ed­ly and, dis­ap­point­ing­ly, few have been im­ple­ment­ed. The TTMA be­lieves that in­vest­ing in strate­gic de­vel­op­men­tal ac­tiv­i­ties and gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy must be the pri­or­i­ties in the 2011/2012 bud­get. It out­lined that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion should fo­cus on gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions and lo­cal con­tent pol­i­cy. This pol­i­cy should en­gen­der trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty at all lev­els, which are re­quired to build con­fi­dence in the busi­ness sec­tor for re-in­vest­ment and to dri­ve com­pet­i­tive­ness. The TTMA said it was con­cerned about T&T's rank­ing in the 2010-2011 Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex re­leased by the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum, even though T&T moved from the 86th po­si­tion in 2009 to 84 in 2010, out of 139 coun­tries sur­veyed. A year ago, the TTMA not­ed that calls were made for T&T to be­come a knowl­edge-based, in­no­v­a­tive, re­search-dri­ven econ­o­my. Tar­get­ed mea­sures to en­cour­age in­no­va­tion, in­vest­ment, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and growth are ur­gent­ly need­ed to in­crease the ca­pac­i­ty of the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to gen­er­ate wealth and long-term eco­nom­ic growth and jobs, TTMA said.

Pub­lic sec­tor re­form

Re­gard­ing pub­lic sec­tor re­form, the TTMA em­pha­sised: "It is im­per­a­tive that the pub­lic sec­tor be­come per­for­mance and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty dri­ven and are com­pen­sat­ed on these cri­te­ria," it said. The TTMA said Gov­ern­ment should en­sure there is com­pre­hen­sive in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing of all reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies, in­clud­ing Cus­toms and Ex­cise, the T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards, Plant Quar­an­tine, Chem­istry, Food and Drug Di­vi­sion and Fair Trad­ing Au­thor­i­ty of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try. These agen­cies must fa­cil­i­tate busi­ness op­er­a­tions and pro­vide free and fair lo­cal trad­ing plat­form, the busi­ness body said. "There­fore, re­sources, in­clud­ing ef­fec­tive leg­is­la­tion and in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, must be pro­vid­ed."

Out­stand­ing VAT pay­ments

The TTMA said the is­sue of out­stand­ing val­ue added tax (VAT) re­funds has cre­at­ed se­vere cash­flow prob­lems, not on­ly for its mem­bers, but is a tremen­dous hin­drance to the lo­cal busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Con­se­quent­ly, TTMA said, it hopes that Gov­ern­ment man­dates the turnover time for VAT re­funds to the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor be with­in 45 days of fil­ing. On Ju­ly 14, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, said VAT col­lec­tion was a fail­ure with a short­fall of $300 mil­lion. He said ev­i­dence sug­gest­ed that VAT col­lec­tion has been de­creas­ing over time as a re­sult of a num­ber of com­pa­nies not re­mit­ting what they would have col­lect­ed. Dook­er­an who was de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Au­dit Com­mit­tee Mem­bers Inc (CAAM) fifth an­nu­al meet­ing and con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. In re­sponse, the TTMA said the Gov­ern­ment needs to im­prove its pro­ce­dure for VAT re­funds. "The present VAT re­fund sys­tem di­rect­ly im­pedes the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­ment of the non-en­er­gy sec­tor and, there­fore, is a note­wor­thy hin­drance in the Gov­ern­ment's aim to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my," TTMA said. The TTMA sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment pass­es a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion to con­vert re­funds owed in­to cred­its that can be ap­plied to mem­bers' VAT pay­ments. While the TTMA ac­knowl­edges that man­u­fac­tur­ers en­joy du­ty-free con­ces­sions on the im­por­ta­tion of raw ma­te­ri­als, it said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is still re­quired to pay VAT on im­port­ed raw ma­te­ri­als. It is rec­om­mend­ing that the Gov­ern­ment ex­tends the ex­emp­tion to VAT on the im­por­ta­tion of raw ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment.

En­vi­ron­ment sus­tain­abil­i­ty

The TTMA has been a strong ad­vo­cate on en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tices. It has em­pha­sised that the Gov­ern­ment should take more se­ri­ous ac­tion to­wards the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pri­vate sec­tor ver­sion of the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill, which the TTMA has been at­tempt­ing to have passed for al­most ten years. If passed, the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er Bill would not on­ly al­low for the suc­cess­ful re­moval of bev­er­age con­tain­ers from drains and wa­ter­ways, but it would even­tu­al­ly pave the way for re­cy­cling of oth­er ma­te­ri­als, such as tries and ap­pli­ances, known in the re­cy­cling in­dus­try as white waste. In con­duct­ing the 2011 Cen­sus, one of the ques­tions the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice asked re­spon­dents was what re­cy­cling mea­sures do they adopt in their home.