Nadaleen Singh

T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) pres­i­dent Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in claims the pri­vate sec­tor is con­tribut­ing to the "strain" in the sup­ply of for­eign ex­change by "mov­ing US cur­ren­cy out of T&T in ex­cess of their re­quire­ments."

He al­so said the pri­vate sec­tor is "tak­ing tax avoid­ance to new heights," in that many large busi­ness­es are pay­ing "far less tax than you might think.'

"The ques­tion of a Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff which, many of us en­joy the pro­tec­tion of ...I do won­der if there are parts of the pri­vate sec­tor which are in fact be­ing sub­sidised by the State in­stead of con­tribut­ing to it by way of tax­es. I won­der whether we are smart enough, we have nev­er man­aged to work this out," he said when he ad­dressed a Bank­ing Week event in Port-of-Spain ear­li­er this week.

Bal­go­b­in al­so ques­tioned the will­ing­ness of T&T pri­vate sec­tor to ex­port. Re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to the US$24 mil­lion ship­ment which left T&T for Venezuela last week, he said Venezuela was will­ing to spend much more than that, but T&T could not sup­ply more goods.

"The Venezue­lans came here with US$50 mil­lion and we could on­ly sell them US$26 mil­lion. We still have US$24 mil­lion more on the ta­ble. Then there is go­ing to be an­oth­er US$50 mil­lion af­ter and an­oth­er US$50 mil­lion af­ter that."

Bal­go­b­in, who ac­cused mem­bers of the pri­vate sec­tor of sit­ting and wait­ing on Gov­ern­ment to find op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­port, added: "We had a great align­ment with gov­ern­ment but to my sur­prise there are el­e­ments in the pri­vate sec­tor which seem un­will­ing and un­able to do busi­ness at the lev­el where they are earn­ing for­eign ex­change.

"I find that quite re­mark­able be­cause it is the same el­e­ments in the pri­vate sec­tor that want to curse every­one in sight when they can't get US dol­lars to buy."

He said there have been too many in­stances where the pri­vate sec­tor has found it­self "un­ready to meet chal­lenges at pre­cise­ly the time when we need to take the bur­den off the Gov­ern­ment."

"What is its role oth­er than wait­ing for the gov­ern­ment to say what we should be do­ing?" he asked.

"You are ask­ing me to speak about busi­ness and bank­ing but I am al­so think­ing of busi­ness and the so­ci­ety."