STO­RIES BY

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The open­ing of Pen­ny­wise’s newest and largest re­tail lo­ca­tion at Pen­ny­wise Plaza at the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate has be­come an­oth­er sig­nal that busi­ness­es are re­gain­ing con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter tour­ing the new store, Tan­coo de­scribed the in­vest­ment as ev­i­dence that the pri­vate sec­tor is re­spond­ing pos­i­tive­ly to the Gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies, while ac­knowl­edg­ing there is still work to be done.

“I think that the open­ing of this store here by Pen­ny­wise is a sig­nal to the rest of the coun­try that there’s con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my of Trinidad. There’s con­fi­dence in the poli­cies of the Gov­ern­ment, and that things are start­ing to look much, much bet­ter. We’re not where we want to be yet, but we are get­ting there,” Tan­coo said.

He not­ed that the ex­pan­sion rep­re­sent­ed “a sub­stan­tial demon­stra­tion by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my.”

The new Pen­ny­wise Plaza has been con­firmed as the largest of the re­tail­er’s three plaza de­vel­op­ments across the coun­try, mark­ing an­oth­er ma­jor in­vest­ment by the lo­cal re­tail chain, de­spite on­go­ing eco­nom­ic head­winds.

Tan­coo al­so ad­dressed con­cerns sur­round­ing re­cent­ly an­nounced changes af­fect­ing im­port­ed ve­hi­cles, dis­miss­ing claims cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia that the Gov­ern­ment had in­tro­duced a new tax.

He said con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­ers had pro­duced a clear frame­work and stressed that the changes were in­flu­enced by in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards that Trinidad and To­ba­go is re­quired to fol­low.

“There was a mis­con­cep­tion that there was an in­crease in some tax­es on ve­hi­cles. That is not true,” he said, adding that im­porters with ve­hi­cles al­ready on the wa­ter or at the na­tion’s ports would face no ad­di­tion­al costs.

Look­ing ahead to the 2027 na­tion­al bud­get, Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains fo­cussed on im­prov­ing liv­ing stan­dards de­spite con­strained rev­enues.

He main­tained that the ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­it­ed an econ­o­my that had con­tract­ed by about 20 per cent over the pre­vi­ous decade while pub­lic bor­row­ing in­creased and the qual­i­ty of life failed to im­prove.

“We are work­ing to sub­sti­tute a dy­ing econ­o­my. We are work­ing on chang­ing the in­fra­struc­ture, chang­ing the pub­lic per­cep­tion and chang­ing the in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work to im­prove T&T,” Tan­coo said.

He al­so point­ed to re­cent as­sess­ments by in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing agen­cies as an in­di­ca­tion that the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion is im­prov­ing, say­ing they are be­gin­ning to view Trinidad and To­ba­go more favourably as the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ments re­forms.

While de­clin­ing to dis­cuss on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions on oth­er eco­nom­ic mat­ters, Tan­coo said fur­ther de­tails on the Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal strat­e­gy will be out­lined when he presents the na­tion­al bud­get lat­er this year.