Es­tab­lish­ing a co­op­er­a­tive bank, in­tro­duc­ing small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neur­ship in­cu­ba­tors, fos­ter­ing youth em­pow­er­ment and tack­ling crime are some of the rec­om­men­da­tions which are on the wish­list of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T for the up­com­ing 2024 na­tion­al bud­get.

Ac­cord­ing to its chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, Di­anne Joseph, the league is the na­tion­al um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion for cred­it unions in the coun­try, rep­re­sent­ing 700,000 mem­bers, 129 cred­it unions with as­sets of some $19 bil­lion dol­lars.

“Grant the cred­it union move­ment the ap­proval for the in­tro­duc­tion of a co­op­er­a­tive bank rather than the de­pen­den­cy on oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to de­posit our TT$19 bil­lion dol­lars. The fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions have been de­duct­ing funds to hold ac­counts, to cash a cheque over the counter and oth­er fees that are putting ad­di­tion­al bur­den on our mem­bers.

“In ad­di­tion, the de­lay in amend­ing the leg­is­la­tion to al­low cred­it unions to en­cash gov­ern­ment cheques, while oth­er small shops and stores do, must be ad­dressed so that our 700,000 mem­bers can ben­e­fit and our se­nior cit­i­zens who are mem­bers will not be forced to pay com­mis­sions to stores and shops to cash their cheques,” Joseph told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

On small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neur­ship in­cu­ba­tors, Joseph not­ed that cred­it union mem­bers with small busi­ness­es can ac­cess fi­nanc­ing as in­di­vid­u­als through their cred­it unions.

How­ev­er, through a small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neur­ship in­cu­ba­tor ini­tia­tive, they will be pro­vid­ed with ad­di­tion­al ad­vice and guid­ance and/or ser­vices which may in­clude ac­count­ing, strate­gic re­view, le­gal among oth­ers.

This, Joseph said, will aid them to start, grow and ex­pand their busi­ness­es, adding that the league can serve as that in­cu­ba­tor com­mit­tee sup­port­ed by cred­it union vol­un­teers and lat­er a full-time staff.

‘This will in­clude a na­tion­wide small busi­ness di­rec­to­ry to pro­mote these en­tre­pre­neurs. Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for this ini­tia­tive will al­low SMEs to sur­vive and grow and thus boost the econ­o­my,” Joseph ex­plained.

Re­gard­ing youth em­pow­er­ment, she said there needs to be a youth sup­port ecosys­tem to build young peo­ple in­to fu­ture lead­ers and pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens.

Joseph added that this in­cludes, but is not lim­it­ed to, part­ner­ships with ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions to of­fer dis­counts for cours­es based on cred­it union mem­ber­ship and/or com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ini­tia­tives and di­rect school in­ter­ven­tions at which co­op­er­a­tive ed­u­ca­tion is placed on the cur­ricu­lum.

In the case of To­ba­go, Joseph said giv­en the fact that it is a high tourist des­ti­na­tion, ed­u­ca­tion on this should be placed on the agen­da for young peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in this area to be ready to en­ter the in­dus­try up­on leav­ing school.

Fur­ther, she ad­vised that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion should con­sid­er an ed­u­ca­tion aware­ness cam­paign to teach youths about the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion and that ed­u­ca­tion is the key to their fu­ture suc­cess and well-be­ing.

“Cur­rent­ly and more­so, af­ter the pan­dem­ic, many young peo­ple have dropped out of school and are seek­ing small jobs, not fo­cus­ing on the need for ed­u­ca­tion and their fu­ture plans and sta­bil­i­ty. Our Gov­ern­ment needs to fund these pro­grammes so that we win back our young peo­ple,” Joseph said, adding that coun­selling ser­vices for the youths must be re­duced or ful­ly fund­ed by the State.

On the is­sue of prop­er­ty tax, Joseph said mem­bers re­main con­cerned about its in­tro­duc­tion as there is cur­rent­ly no spe­cif­ic fee struc­ture or guid­ance to ease the ten­sion.

She added that in the like­ly even, that the Gov­ern­ment per­sists in im­ple­ment­ing the tax, the or­gan­i­sa­tion will con­tin­ue to rec­om­mend that it be done in­cre­men­tal­ly start­ing with com­mer­cial and oth­er sec­tors with do­mes­tic be­ing the last.

“In so do­ing, it will give our mem­bers and cit­i­zens more time to start their re­cov­ery process and set­tle down, fi­nan­cial­ly and so­cial­ly, be­fore hav­ing to face ad­di­tion­al debt bur­den,” Joseph ex­plained.

Crime re­mains an­oth­er press­ing is­sue.

Joseph urged it is crit­i­cal that the re­cruit­ment sys­tem for of­fice hold­ers with­in the law en­force­ment are­na such as the po­lice, army, coast guard and oth­ers be strate­gi­cal­ly strength­ened so to “get the best fit for of­fice.”

“The sta­tis­tics show that many per­sons who have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­force the law are them­selves, break­ing the law. The root case must be de­tect­ed and cor­rect­ed,” she said.

In ad­di­tion, Joseph added that the Po­lice Ser­vice must be pro­vid­ed with en­hanced in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy tools to aid their work and those charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to lead must be held ac­count­able for their per­for­mance.

On a wider note, Joseph de­scribed that the na­tion­al bud­get is gen­er­al­ly packed with good ideas for the de­vel­op­ment or ex­pan­sion of the econ­o­my in ar­eas such as ed­u­ca­tion, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, youth de­vel­op­ment or em­pow­er­ment and so­cial fac­tors.

How­ev­er, she not­ed that ful­fil­ment of these goals and im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies ap­pear to be a draw­back.

“We re­main with deficit bud­get­ing. US$ short­ages ap­pear to be wors­en­ing, un­em­ploy­ment and un­der­em­ploy­ment con­tin­ue to be a cause for con­cern, crime con­tin­ues to spi­ral out of con­trol and there are con­tin­u­ous chal­lenges with­in our school sys­tem. These is­sues con­tribute to the cur­rent so­cial is­sues and what ap­pears to be an in­creas­ing trend in youth delin­quen­cy and the ex­tinc­tion of many at the hands of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Their demise may be at­trib­uted to a lack of fi­nan­cial re­sources, high food prices and oth­er in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures that do not al­low many cit­i­zens to prop­er­ly sat­is­fy their so­cial needs and there­fore, turn to a life of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” Joseph stat­ed.

Not­ing re­peat­ed bud­getary pro­pos­als for the in­clu­sion of key stake­hold­ers in clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion on the fore­go­ing is­sues have not been ful­ly ad­dressed, Joseph ad­vised that there should be the pool­ing re­sources to ar­rive at strate­gic im­per­a­tives, which may guide the way for­ward in re­solv­ing some of the peren­ni­al so­ci­etal chal­lenges.

She em­pha­sised that con­sis­tent with rec­om­men­da­tions from the 2023 UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Re­port on co­op­er­a­tives in So­cial De­vel­op­ment” the2024 bud­get should iden­ti­fy poli­cies that would sup­port and strength­en co­op­er­a­tives as suc­cess­ful busi­ness en­ter­pris­es to in­crease their abil­i­ty to sup­port sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and in­crease eco­nom­ic and so­cial well-be­ing.  

In look­ing back at 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 bud­gets, Joseph said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic would have added to the many set­backs that the coun­try would have faced over sev­er­al decades.

How­ev­er, she not­ed that Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer of a TT$100 mil­lion cred­it fa­cil­i­ty to the cred­it union move­ment for loan grant­i­ng to mem­bers af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic was wel­comed but not ful­ly sub­scribed due to the fact that cred­it unions were suf­fi­cient­ly liq­uid to take care of their mem­bers’ fi­nan­cial needs.

Ac­cord­ing to Joseph, many mem­bers were al­so of the view that they pre­ferred a grant from gov­ern­ment, rather than a loan and hence they did not sup­port the ini­tia­tive.