GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Fis­cal re­silience and busi­ness cash flow are at the heart of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s as­sess­ment of Bud­get 2027, with the busi­ness group warn­ing that the coun­try’s fis­cal out­look re­mains vul­ner­a­ble to swings in glob­al en­er­gy prices.

The cham­ber yes­ter­day not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­ject­ed fis­cal deficit of 2.1 per cent of GDP is based on as­sump­tions of US$77 per bar­rel for oil and US$5 per MMB­tu for nat­ur­al gas, leav­ing pub­lic fi­nances ex­posed should prices fall be­low ex­pec­ta­tions.

It is, there­fore, call­ing for sen­si­tiv­i­ty analy­ses and clear­ly de­fined con­tin­gency mea­sures to man­age any po­ten­tial rev­enue short­falls. The cham­ber, how­ev­er, wel­comed sev­er­al mea­sures aimed at sup­port­ing busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion but stressed that im­ple­men­ta­tion will be crit­i­cal to de­ter­min­ing their suc­cess.

It said the re­ten­tion and re­form of the Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) regime pro­vides a mea­sure of pol­i­cy cer­tain­ty for busi­ness­es. How­ev­er, it ex­pressed con­cern that the bud­get did not ad­dress long­stand­ing VAT re­fund ar­rears or out­stand­ing pay­ments owed to con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, these pay­ments are es­sen­tial for restor­ing busi­ness cash flow, help­ing com­pa­nies meet fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions and sup­port­ing fu­ture in­vest­ment.

It is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pub­lish a clear timetable for set­tling out­stand­ing VAT re­funds and pay­ments while in­tro­duc­ing ser­vice stan­dards for pro­cess­ing new claims.

The cham­ber al­so raised con­cerns about pro­pos­als to cap car­ried-for­ward loss­es at 75 per cent of charge­able prof­its. It ar­gued that the change could dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect new busi­ness­es seek­ing to re­cov­er start-up costs and build prof­itabil­i­ty.

On for­eign ex­change, the cham­ber said while ex­pand­ed ac­cess to Ex­im­bank fa­cil­i­ties for el­i­gi­ble SMEs and man­u­fac­tur­ers was wel­come, the bud­get did not pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive re­sponse to chron­ic forex short­ages fac­ing the busi­ness sec­tor.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion not­ed that lim­it­ed ac­cess to for­eign cur­ren­cy con­tin­ues to dis­rupt sup­ply chains, de­lay pay­ments to over­seas sup­pli­ers and con­strain busi­ness ex­pan­sion.

Among its rec­om­men­da­tions are a trans­par­ent for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion pol­i­cy ac­ces­si­ble to all busi­ness­es, month­ly re­port­ing by the Cen­tral Bank on forex avail­abil­i­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion, greater ac­cess for SMEs, broad­er Ex­im­bank cov­er­age for non-en­er­gy sec­tors and stronger co­or­di­na­tion be­tween fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and pol­i­cy­mak­ers.

In the en­er­gy sec­tor, the cham­ber wel­comed ini­tia­tives de­signed to in­crease nat­ur­al gas sup­ply and ac­cel­er­ate in­vest­ment, de­scrib­ing them as im­por­tant for down­stream in­dus­tries and the wider econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, it cau­tioned that time­ly ap­provals and pol­i­cy cer­tain­ty would be need­ed if these ini­tia­tives are to de­liv­er mean­ing­ful re­sults.