As the mid-year bud­get re­view ap­proach­es busi­ness cham­ber heads would like to see the for­eign ex­change ac­cess dif­fi­cul­ties, ease of do­ing busi­ness, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strate­gies as well as crime and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, be at the fore­front.

The Busi­ness Guardian spoke to sev­er­al cham­ber heads to get their per­spec­tive on what helped pro­pel the econ­o­my.

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said it is no se­cret that T&T has to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue the de­vel­op­ment of the non-en­er­gy sec­tors to not on­ly sus­tain eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty but to dri­ve the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) up­wards.  

He out­lined that the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor has to be giv­en greater pri­or­i­ty as the food im­port bill is over $7 bil­lion.  

Singh said chal­lenges of in­ad­e­quate tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems, aged equip­ment, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny and the weath­er af­fect the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of this sec­tor.  

“Sup­ply chain lo­gis­tics(ship­ping, in­sur­ance, truck­ing, etc) and the Ukraine-Rus­sia war have dri­ven up im­port costs. We have to in­crease pro­duc­tion and make our pro­duce at­trac­tive to the buy­ing pub­lic,” he stat­ed.

Al­so, Singh said the ma­rine sec­tor has not been de­vel­oped to the ca­pac­i­ty for which it can per­form more pos­i­tive­ly to gen­er­ate forex, as the cruise ship in­dus­try, yachties, and ship and boat re­pair can all con­tribute to for­eign earn­ings in the short term.  

“Out­dat­ed sys­tems, if digi­tised, can re­duce the dread­ed pro­cess­ing times the yachties en­counter when en­ter­ing our wa­ters. Our nat­ur­al har­bours pro­vide a haven for many sea­far­ers. We need to cap­i­talise on this. The La Brea Dry Dock Fa­cil­i­ty can be de­vel­oped for berthing and ship re­pair. This will cre­ate em­ploy­ment and rev­enue for the south­west­ern penin­su­la,” he said.  

Singh point­ed out that the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment that the Debe Cam­pus of the UWI will open is a pos­i­tive move in the di­rec­tion of pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in the of­fer­ing of the many ser­vices (food, jan­i­to­r­i­al, se­cu­ri­ty, main­te­nance, land­scap­ing, etc) that are re­quired to op­er­ate that cam­pus.  

He not­ed that T&T has to keep pace with the world and digi­ti­sa­tion must be a top pri­or­i­ty in im­prov­ing the coun­try’s ease of do­ing busi­ness rank­ing.  

“From reg­is­ter­ing a new busi­ness to fil­ing tax re­turns, an­nu­al re­turns, na­tion­al in­sur­ance, open­ing bank ac­counts, ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing and cus­toms re­quire­ments are just some of the is­sues busi­ness­es face dai­ly,” Singh said.

As it per­tains to the re­open­ing of the de­funct Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the cham­ber head said who­ev­er is cho­sen will not be able to restart it at the push of a but­ton.  

“Sev­er­al months will pass be­fore we can ben­e­fit from its rev­enue. The short-term ben­e­fits will be em­ploy­ment cre­ation and the re-ac­ti­va­tion of down­stream in­dus­tries. We sup­port this ini­tia­tive.”

He said fol­low­ing the mid-year bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, the cham­ber will be re­quest­ing a meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance at his ear­li­est con­ve­nience, to dis­cuss eco­nom­ic is­sues.

 Pres­i­dent of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber Ra­mon Gre­go­rio, said the forex sit­u­a­tion re­mains an is­sue and the cham­ber ad­vo­cates for in­creased trans­paren­cy in the al­lo­ca­tion sys­tem, wider par­tic­i­pa­tion of ex­porters in the forex mar­ket, in­cen­tives to grow non-en­er­gy ex­ports, such as agri­cul­ture, tech, and man­u­fac­tur­ing as well as a man­aged float sys­tem with clear­er rules that could help build con­fi­dence.

Gre­go­rio out­lined that in In­dia, re­forms were made to in­crease ac­cess to forex for le­git­i­mate busi­ness use. At the same time, lib­er­al­is­ing parts of the cap­i­tal ac­count and en­cour­ag­ing ex­port-ori­ent­ed in­dus­tries, as well as sim­i­lar di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in Trinidad, could ease for­eign ex­change de­mand.

In terms of the crime sit­u­a­tion, he said the busi­ness con­fi­dence of small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) and re­tail op­er­a­tors in high-risk ar­eas is be­ing erod­ed.  

He said the cham­ber rec­om­mends com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing mod­els, sur­veil­lance in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment and ju­di­cial re­form to speed up case back­logs.

Gre­go­rio in­di­cat­ed that the cham­ber has been en­gag­ing mem­bers by col­lab­o­rat­ing and part­ner­ing with law en­force­ment via Ea­gle Eye Tech­nol­o­gy for re­al-time crime de­tec­tion and re­sponse.  

With the gov­ern­ment an­nounc­ing that this coun­try is in a deficit, he said in or­der to keep the coun­try afloat it can im­prove tax com­pli­ance through digi­ti­sa­tion, pri­ori­tise cap­i­tal spend­ing with high mul­ti­pli­er ef­fects, lever­age pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships (PPPs) to re­duce state ex­pen­di­ture, sup­port lo­cal en­ter­prise de­vel­op­ment to re­duce im­port de­pen­den­cy.

He high­light­ed that Greece and Por­tu­gal, dur­ing their deficit pe­ri­ods, pri­ori­tised spend­ing re­forms, ef­fi­cient tax col­lec­tion, and EU-aligned digi­ti­sa­tion to sta­bilise their economies with­out ex­treme aus­ter­i­ty.

Al­so giv­ing his views Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Sudesh Ramkissoon said the crime sit­u­a­tion would be a ma­jor con­cern for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and what can be a ben­e­fi­cial plan.

From an Ari­ma stand­point, Ramkissoon said the as­so­ci­a­tion would love to see some gov­ern­ment of­fices come to the Ari­ma Bor­ough to help boost com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.  

As it re­lates to the deficit, he said this deficit has in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the last 10 years, due to in­creased bor­row­ings and de­ferred loan pay­ments.  

“The present gov­ern­ment, I hope, will have plans to boost na­tion­al pro­duc­tion and hope­ful­ly de­crease un­em­ploy­ment. I do hope that some form of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment takes place and maybe of­fers on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets the emp­ty spaces at our eTeck parks. These fa­cil­i­ties are ready to be utilised and would great­ly boost our GDP.  It may al­so be of ben­e­fit if any lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers are of­fered at­trac­tive terms to in­vest lo­cal­ly and help bol­ster and in­crease ex­ports. The restart­ing of the re­fin­ery would al­so see some pos­i­tive ben­e­fit as lo­cal em­ploy­ment would be in­creased along with an in­jec­tion of US dol­lars back in­to the sys­tem,” Ramkissoon de­tailed.

The pres­i­dent of the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce De­o­raj Ma­hase said some of the things that the cham­ber would like to see ad­dressed are crime pre­ven­tion and im­proved polic­ing in­clud­ing faster solv­ing of cas­es, im­proved in­cen­tives that can boost in­vest­ments from lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions which can en­hance train­ing and job op­por­tu­ni­ties which in­creas­ing rev­enue and forex earn­ings, cus­tom and Ex­cise re­form in­clud­ing statu­to­ry bod­ies and oth­er af­fil­i­at­ed Gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies which can trans­late in­to more ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Al­so, he said  dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion across all sec­tors, de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of var­i­ous Gov­ern­men­tal ser­vices, a more da­ta-dri­ven ap­proach to­wards man­ag­ing the econ­o­my and con­sid­er mea­sure to ad­dress the road net­work in the short, medi­um and long term.

Asked what more can be done to as­sist SMEs, Ma­hase said to in­crease pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the area of man­u­fac­tur­ing for ex­port, all im­por­ta­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment should be giv­en a 150 per cent al­lowance (wear and tear) for the next two years and for any new man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny where no more that 40 per cent of the prod­uct is made as­sem­bled out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go, that com­pa­ny is giv­en a tax rate of 15 per cent for its first three years of op­er­a­tions.

What are some of the things the gov­ern­ment should do to help di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my as the en­er­gy projects will take an­oth­er two years to bring re­sults?

On what the gov­ern­ment should do to help di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, Ma­hase point­ed to ex­pand­ing the role of agri­cul­ture for which some ini­tia­tives have al­ready be­gun, but not just tra­di­tion­al ap­proach­es but a more mod­ern con­cept for the en­tire are. That would trans­late in­to ex­port-dri­ven crops for forex earn­ings, seek to col­lab­o­rate with non-tra­di­tion­al ex­ter­nal mar­kets for both im­ports and ex­ports, im­port sub­sti­tu­tion where pos­si­ble.  

Fur­ther, he not­ed the green en­er­gy projects to save do­mes­tic pow­er con­sump­tion and di­vert it to­wards the busi­ness or man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and sig­nif­i­cant­ly seek to in­vest and ex­pand the ship­ping and lo­gis­tics in­dus­try as rev­enue-earn­ing cen­tre which will al­so earn forex.

Ma­hase added that the cham­ber will be seek­ing to meet with key min­is­ters, not just the fi­nance min­is­ter, on their rec­om­men­da­tions.