The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) has wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tial $20 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for the Ch­agua­nas Ring Road project, say­ing it could help ad­dress long­stand­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion af­fect­ing busi­ness­es in the bor­ough.

CCIC pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said the al­lo­ca­tion in the 2026-2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get would fund pre­lim­i­nary work, in­clud­ing traf­fic stud­ies, en­vi­ron­men­tal test­ing, land sur­veys and de­sign re­views.

Ma­haraj said per­sis­tent con­ges­tion had wast­ed time, af­fect­ed busi­ness op­er­a­tions and made it dif­fi­cult for cus­tomers to ac­cess stores along Ch­agua­nas Main Road.

He said im­prov­ing traf­fic flow would make it eas­i­er for cus­tomers to shop, busi­ness­es to op­er­ate and goods to be trans­port­ed, while help­ing to at­tract in­vest­ment, ex­pand lo­cal busi­ness­es and cre­ate jobs.

Ma­haraj said the project could al­so strength­en Ch­agua­nas as a com­mer­cial hub and sup­port the de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

While wel­com­ing the al­lo­ca­tion, he said the suc­cess of the wider bud­get would de­pend on how ef­fi­cient­ly the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed its pro­pos­als.

“A bud­get is on­ly a plan on pa­per un­til it is put in­to ac­tion,” he said.

Ma­haraj al­so iden­ti­fied crime as a ma­jor con­cern for busi­ness­es and res­i­dents, say­ing the sub­stan­tial al­lo­ca­tion for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty should re­sult in a stronger po­lice pres­ence and faster court process­es.

He called for ac­tion on chal­lenges fac­ing busi­ness­es out­side the en­er­gy sec­tor, in­clud­ing de­lays in val­ue-added tax (VAT) re­funds, dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change and ex­ces­sive gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy.

More pre­dictable ac­cess to for­eign ex­change, faster VAT re­funds and re­duced ad­min­is­tra­tive de­lays would help busi­ness­es op­er­ate more ef­fi­cient­ly and sup­port eco­nom­ic growth, he said.

Ma­haraj said the Cham­ber was pre­pared to work with gov­ern­ment min­istries and lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to en­sure the bud­get’s pro­pos­als were im­ple­ment­ed.

He said the pri­or­i­ty was to trans­late the com­mit­ments in­to tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments for busi­ness­es and res­i­dents in Ch­agua­nas and across Trinidad and To­ba­go.