Gail Alexan­der

The ef­fects of on­line sales will be­gin to pose se­ri­ous com­pe­ti­tion to T&T's re­tail sec­tor in years ahead, Fi­nance Min­is­ter LAr­ry Howai warned yes­ter­day.

Howai sound­ed the warn­ing while pi­lot­ing a bill in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to pro­vide for vari­a­tion of cer­tain du­ties and tax­es aris­ing from the 2012- 2013 bud­get pro­vi­sions.

Howai said the re­tail sec­tor had shown ro­bust growth at the end of last year due main­ly to Christ­mas sales.

But he added: "We have to be wary of the im­pact of glob­al­i­sa­tion as the ef­fect of on­line pur­chas­es will be­gin to pose se­ri­ous com­pe­ti­tion to this sec­tor in years to come,"

Howai al­so said gov­ern­ment would bring leg­is­la­tion for es­tab­lish­ment of a gam­ing au­thor­i­ty to reg­u­late the gam­ing sec­tor. He said this should have been on stream long ago.

He said it would take about three years to im­ple­ment leg­is­la­tion. The first laws will be com­plet­ed and passed in the next 18 months or so and arrange­ments to bring it in­to ef­fect may take tabout a year af­ter that. In the in­ter­im, he added, gov­ern­ment would try to in­crease rev­enue from the sec­tor.

On as­pects of the econ­o­my since the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Howai said un­em­ploy­ment re­mained rea­son­ably con­trolled at just over five per cent. He said in­fla­tion had be­gun to show signs of mod­er­at­ing.

Howai said fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic buffers re­mained strong, for­eign ex­change earn­ings con­tin­ued to grow and the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund closed the last year at US$4.7b.

The min­is­ter said T&T's rat­ings with Stan­dard and Poors and Moody's re­mained at A and BW1 re­spec­tive­ly–a sta­ble out­look.

Howai how­ev­er said the en­tire takeover of Cli­co was bad­ly han­dled and had com­pro­mised gov­ern­ment's abil­i­ty to re­cov­er the $19b pumped in­to Cli­co. He said fail­ure to reg­u­late the group cost T&T dear­ly and the coun­try would nev­er be able to re­cov­er the funds put in­to the group.