Raphael John-Lall

Busi­ness cham­bers in south Trinidad are sat­is­fied that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert promised to make for­eign ex­change avail­able to the Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (SME) sec­tor with­in the next six months in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion for fis­cal year 2024.

On Mon­day, Im­bert said: “I ex­pect to be able to im­ple­ment this new SME forex fa­cil­i­ty with­in the next six months, which should re­duce the de­mand for sales of for­eign ex­change us­ing cred­it cards," said Im­bert, adding, "In par­tic­u­lar, in 2024, we will cre­ate new arrange­ments for pref­er­en­tial ac­cess to for­eign ex­change for qual­i­fied small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, and in this re­gard, I have al­ready re­ceived very use­ful rec­om­men­da­tions from the Cham­ber of Com­merce, the com­mer­cial banks and the Ex­im­Bank.”

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has been com­plain­ing for many years that they do not have ac­cess to enough for­eign ex­change to do in­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions.

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Daphne Bartlett told the Busi­ness Guardian that she was sat­is­fied to see em­pha­sis placed on as­sist­ing the SME sec­tor.

“The main­tain­ing of the Ex­im­Bank and the in­crease in the al­lo­ca­tion of US dol­lars for SME’s was wel­comed. We have to in­crease our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and our abil­i­ty to ex­port to earn for­eign ex­change.”

How­ev­er, she said that in gen­er­al she was not im­pressed as it was an­oth­er deficit bud­get.

“I de­scribe the bud­get as a pot of callaloo. The Min­is­ter gave sev­er­al large fig­ures by adding up four years al­lo­ca­tion try­ing to give the or­di­nary cit­i­zen the im­pres­sion that much more is be­ing al­lo­cat­ed than it re­al­ly is. Why in­crease the bud­get for Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty? We have an army which can be brought out to as­sist the po­lice in pa­trolling the hot spots. This would not re­quire ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tion .”

Com­ment­ing on the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for agri­cul­ture, she said more has to be done for the agri­cul­ture sec­tor to help the coun­try be­come self suf­fi­cient.

“We have to start to eat what we plant and plant what we eat. It should be in a struc­tured way where the farmer is guar­an­teed a fair price. Prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is a per­pet­u­al prob­lem for farm­ers and the laws should be ad­just­ed to be more strin­gent for the of­fend­ers.”

She hopes that the Gov­ern­ment de­liv­ers on what is has promised.

“The dev­il is now in the im­pli­ca­tions. We have seen many bud­gets with good in­ten­tions but im­ple­men­ta­tion was al­ways lack­ing. We bud­get for sev­er­al projects but they are nev­er com­plet­ed and we al­lo­cate funds to it again the next year.”

Pres­i­dent of Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, Ki­ran Singh, told the Busi­ness Guardian that he wel­comes the news that the Gov­ern­ment will im­prove busi­ness­es’ ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.

“The Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment that the SME sec­tor will ben­e­fit from a new mech­a­nism to as­sist in the forex de­mand is a wel­come ini­tia­tive and we await the de­tails of how this will work.”

He said he was al­so hap­py that that the prop­er­ty tax will be rolled out on a phased ba­sis.

“The prop­er­ty tax is com­ing as men­tioned by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. It ap­pears that it will start on a phased ba­sis with the res­i­den­tial sec­tor in the next fis­cal year. This should give us some much need­ed time to pre­pare for pay­ing this tax. Those who can’t af­ford it will be giv­en as­sis­tance. This will pro­vide a safe­ty net for per­sons who are fi­nan­cial­ly chal­lenged and may be threat­ened with los­ing their homes.”

Singh is al­so sat­is­fied that the Gov­ern­ment will take mea­sures to com­bat the in­creas­ing crime rate.

“As ex­pect­ed the na­tion’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty has been ad­dressed. In­creas­ing the in­take of of­fi­cers from 300 to 1000 is a step in the right di­rec­tion. Ad­di­tion­al re­sources for ve­hi­cle pur­chas­es is nec­es­sary. More Scan­ners for the Ports and ves­sels for the Coast Guard will aid the crime fight­ers.”

Com­ment­ing on the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, he said the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture will get an ad­di­tion­al $400 mil­lion which is des­per­ate­ly need­ed to ex­pand lo­cal food pro­duc­tion.

“The Min­is­ter’s ap­proach to put our world grade co­coa and cof­fee back on the in­ter­na­tion­al radar can have gen­er­ous forex ben­e­fits for us lat­er on.”

Gas­par­il­lo

Im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the Gas­par­il­lo Busi­ness Cham­ber, Anil Ramjit, told the Busi­ness Guardian that he is hap­py that the Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to ad­dress the forex is­sue.

“I am hap­py to hear about the set­ting up of the en­ti­ty with re­gard to forex and the small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es. How­ev­er the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this and the dis­burse­ment is left to be seen. As a busi­ness per­son in­volved in man­u­fac­tur­ing and im­port sub­sti­tu­tion, I nev­er re­ceived help from the Ex­im­Bank. I don’t know how busi­ness­es will qual­i­fy and who can ac­cess it. Go to the gro­cery, al­most every­thing is im­port­ed and I have not heard much with re­gard to forex earn­ings.”

He is wor­ried that the hike in the min­i­mum wage from $17.50 an hour to $20.50 an hour could lead to in­fla­tion which in turn leads to a high­er cost in liv­ing.

“I am hap­py the Gov­ern­ment touched on it but I don’t think that is the best method. The pur­chas­ing pow­er of those at the low­er end will end up back to square one as the cost of liv­ing ris­es as busi­ness will pass on the cost to con­sumers. It is ba­sic eco­nom­ics. What the Gov­ern­ment should do is im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness like more ef­fi­cien­cy on the ports and oth­er ar­eas so busi­ness­es’ costs will be low­er and cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees will ben­e­fit in the end.”

He crit­i­cised the prop­er­ty tax say­ing it will im­pact the cost of liv­ing neg­a­tive­ly.

“No busi­ness will sim­ply take and ab­sorb those costs. They will pass the costs on to the cus­tomers. The un­for­tu­nate thing is that every change the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced will trick­le down and af­fect the most vul­ner­a­ble.”

Siparia

Pres­i­dent of the Siparia Busi­ness Cham­ber Emer­son Ched­die told the Busi­ness Guardian that he wel­comes the in­crease in the min­i­mum wage.

“We wel­come the in­crease in the min­i­mum wage as a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the pop­u­la­tion will serve to ben­e­fit es­pe­cial­ly with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing. We al­so wel­come the oth­er mea­sures such as ex­emp­tion of busi­ness levy on ex­port sales tax cred­its to new man­u­fac­tur­ing es­tab­lish­ments.”

He al­so wel­comed Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to make forex avail­able to the busi­ness sec­tor.

“Most wel­come is the in­tent to ag­gres­sive­ly de­vel­op strate­gies to in­crease the repa­tri­a­tion of for­eign ex­change earned over­seas as this will great­ly as­sist in the sup­ply of for­eign ex­change to as­sist busi­ness­es who de­pend on such.”

How­ev­er, he raised con­cerns about fu­ture pos­si­ble in­creas­es in the cost of fu­el which will af­fect the cost of op­er­at­ing busi­ness.

“Our con­cerns how­ev­er are the im­ple­men­ta­tion of in­creased fu­el costs which will have a rip­ple ef­fect among the trav­el­ling pub­lic as well as on the gro­cery shelves. While the prop­er­ty tax is al­so a cause of con­cern es­pe­cial­ly at this time, we await to see the ef­fects of its im­ple­men­ta­tion and whether it re­dound to the ben­e­fit of our com­mu­ni­ty.”