PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher
@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) Vivek Char­ran is hop­ing the new gov­ern­ment will find a bet­ter bal­ance in terms of for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion.

Fol­low­ing Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dra­dath Tan­coo’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, the CR­BC chair­man agreed with the as­sess­ment that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had not done enough to fos­ter di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and had adopt­ed an ap­proach which sti­fled the cru­cial de­vel­op­ment of small­er busi­ness­es in­to the mar­ket.

How­ev­er, he asked what mea­sures would be im­ple­ment­ed to avoid a sim­i­lar sce­nario with the new gov­ern­ment.

“The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance re­port­ed that net for­eign ex­change hold­ings have dropped by 50 per cent and sev­en-and a-half months of im­port cov­er, but that cov­er­age ex­tends to who? And which sec­tors? This speaks to the im­por­tance of bring­ing more busi­ness­es in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing and food pro­duc­tion both to re­duce for­eign spend­ing where we can have lo­cal equiv­a­lents, but al­so to dri­ve ex­ports to the re­gion by widen­ing our man­u­fac­tur­ing base,” said Char­ran in his com­ment.

He con­tin­ued, “It can­not be that on­ly the largest com­pa­nies and those with deep pock­ets should be court­ed for this. There may not be enough funds for a wise dis­per­sal of cash in­cen­tives for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion but then this should be done; a needs ba­sis where larg­er com­pa­nies can get in­cen­tives through tax breaks and small­er com­pa­nies, will­ing to take the risk to di­ver­si­fy, should be giv­en the grants and cash in­cen­tives.”

Mean­while pres­i­dent of the Ma­rine Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Jesse James said he was dis­ap­point­ed not to hear any plans in­volv­ing the yacht­ing sec­tor in the mid-year re­view.

How­ev­er, he hoped that ini­tial con­ver­sa­tions with the new ad­min­is­tra­tion could trans­late to plans which could lead to for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion through the yacht­ing sec­tor.

“We are very hope­ful and look­ing for­ward to work­ing to­geth­er with the new Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try and Tourism in as­sist­ing our sec­tor to help fix all the var­i­ous is­sues fac­ing us for the past 25-plus years. We al­ready had an in­tro­duc­to­ry meet­ing via the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tions and we have al­ready writ­ten and got a pos­i­tive re­sponse from the Min­is­ter about a meet­ing and site vis­it to Ch­aguara­mas for him to see first hand the great po­ten­tial for forex earn­ing/skilled work force/huge tourism po­ten­tial..etc and to dis­cuss ways for­ward to fix all the is­sues fac­ing our sec­tor,” said James.