Rapheal John-Lall

The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, a proven gen­er­a­tor of for­eign ex­change for the coun­try, is be­ing chal­lenged to step up and play a role in T&T's eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) pres­i­dent Dr Rolph Bal­go­b­in said with the de­cline of en­er­gy in val­ue and vol­ume, the sec­tor "must see it as our na­tion­al du­ty to en­cour­age re­al en­gage­ment and deep com­mit­ment."

"It is about seek­ing to cap­i­talise on the op­por­tu­ni­ties that will lead our econ­o­my in­to a strong re­cov­ery and a re­turn to sig­nif­i­cant growth in the fu­ture," he said yes­ter­day at the me­dia launch of the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC) 2017 at the House of An­gos­tu­ra, Laven­tille.

Bal­go­b­in said man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­counts for be­tween 8-12 per cent of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) and em­ploys more than 50,000 peo­ple–ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten per cent of the work­force.He added: "Af­ter oil and gas, it is the most sig­nif­i­cant and proven earn­er and de­fend­er of for­eign ex­change on our eco­nom­ic land­scape to­day."

Bal­go­b­in said TIC was be­ing launched ear­li­er to al­low the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to make space for the event in their fis­cal plans. He said over the past 17 year TIC has fa­cil­i­tat­ed more than $600 mil­lion in trade and fos­tered lu­cra­tive busi­ness con­nec­tions.

In com­ments on be­half of spon­sors First Cit­i­zens, Deputy CEO, Busi­ness Gen­er­a­tion, Ja­son Julien said lo­cal banks are ready for the For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA).

"We put all our sys­tems and process­es in place to com­ply with the FAT­CA re­quire­ments. Of course we are re­liant on the leg­isla­tive re­quire­ments to be put in place and the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) to re­ceive the in­for­ma­tion," he said.

Julien spoke about neg­a­tive con­se­quences if T&T does not be­come FAT­CA com­pli­ant soon, not­ing that the reper­cus­sions are more com­plex that sim­ply not be­ing to be able goods on­line in the Unit­ed States.

"It is about all cross bor­der trans­ac­tions. When some­one does a wire trans­fer or trade or US dol­lar in­vest­ments and you have a US bond in an ac­count some­where, it is those kinds of flows that will be af­fect­ed," he ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he said he is op­ti­mistic T&T will not reach the stage where it will be pe­nal­ized.

"I think all the stake­hold­ers in­volved are aligned and push­ing so that we do not reach any sce­nario that will cause the coun­try to suf­fer con­se­quences," he said.

Bal­go­b­in ex­pressed his dis­plea­sure at the slow pace of pass­ing leg­is­la­tion to be FAT­CA com­pli­ant.