An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is ac­knowl­edg­ing the in­clu­sion of sev­er­al of its key pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions in the 2026 Bud­get, but is em­pha­sis­ing that the fis­cal pack­age’s suc­cess will de­pend on time­ly and trans­par­ent im­ple­men­ta­tion.

In its post-Bud­get state­ment, the cham­ber un­der­scored that while the Bud­get sig­nals a re­newed com­mit­ment to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, food se­cu­ri­ty, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, and im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness, the re­al test will lie in how ef­fec­tive­ly the mea­sures are ex­e­cut­ed.

It stressed that im­ple­men­ta­tion, not promis­es, will de­ter­mine whether T&T can at­tract in­vest­ment, stim­u­late ex­ports, and de­liv­er mean­ing­ful job cre­ation.

“The fo­cus ar­eas are right. What mat­ters now is de­liv­ery,” the cham­ber not­ed, urg­ing close co­or­di­na­tion be­tween gov­ern­ment agen­cies and the pri­vate sec­tor.

Among the most sig­nif­i­cant mea­sures high­light­ed by the cham­ber is the planned in­vest­ment in agri­cul­ture and food pro­duc­tion, which it said was cru­cial to im­prov­ing na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty and re­duc­ing im­port de­pen­dence. The cham­ber al­so point­ed to sup­port for the cre­ative and ma­rine in­dus­tries, re­forms to tax and cus­toms ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the es­tab­lish­ment of an ex­port acad­e­my to strength­en non-en­er­gy ex­ports.

The acad­e­my, to be de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), is viewed as a ma­jor step to­ward cre­at­ing glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive ex­porters. The cham­ber said this ini­tia­tive, cou­pled with mod­ernised cus­toms sys­tems and sim­pli­fied trade pro­ce­dures, could help repo­si­tion T&T as a re­gion­al ex­port hub, pro­vid­ed bu­reau­crat­ic bot­tle­necks are re­moved.

The cham­ber al­so not­ed the Bud­get’s fo­cus on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and ease of do­ing busi­ness, say­ing greater use of tech­nol­o­gy across pub­lic ser­vices will re­duce in­ef­fi­cien­cy and en­hance trans­paren­cy. It added that pre­dictable reg­u­la­to­ry process­es and faster de­ci­sion-mak­ing re­main vi­tal to im­prov­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence.

How­ev­er, the cham­ber stressed that good ideas alone are not enough. “While the Bud­get sets a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion, ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion will be crit­i­cal to achiev­ing re­sults,” it stat­ed.

The cham­ber reaf­firmed its readi­ness to col­lab­o­rate with the Gov­ern­ment, in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, and lo­cal stake­hold­ers to en­sure the an­nounced mea­sures trans­late in­to re­al, sus­tain­able out­comes.