While Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says the coun­try has suf­fi­cient for­eign ex­change re­serves, busi­ness peo­ple re­main starved of for­eign cur­ren­cy mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to pur­chase goods and pay bills. Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Richie Sookhai and Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh shared this view in re­sponse to re­marks made by Im­bert in his mid-year bud­get re­view pre­sen­ta­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. Re­spond­ing to a sug­ges­tion by a lo­cal ra­dio com­men­ta­tor that gov­ern­ment ap­proach the IMF, Im­bert said Trinidad and To­ba­go has suf­fi­cient for­eign ex­change re­serves in the vicin­i­ty of US $7 bil­lion.

Sookhai, how­ev­er, said, “Busi­ness­es es­pe­cial­ly at a time like this are re­al­ly hav­ing a hard time ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change to pay bills, sup­plies and what­not. Even I am hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty even bring­ing in es­sen­tial goods in­to the coun­try. Now it is be­com­ing a lot more com­pet­i­tive than be­fore giv­en that the glob­al sup­ply chain it­self has been un­der strain due to the COVID-19.”

Not­ing that prices are start­ing to rise, he ques­tioned, “How are these busi­ness­es go­ing to com­pete es­pe­cial­ly when you don’t even have for­eign ex­change to pay for the pro­duces?”

On the is­sue of SMEs (small medi­um en­ter­pris­es) un­able to qual­i­fy for the ze­ro-in­ter­est loan be­cause they did not have au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials, Sookai is hop­ing to part­ner with the min­istry and the rel­e­vant min­istries to ad­dress this. “We will be look­ing for­ward to see how it could reach the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly those who need it at this time, he said.

While the gov­ern­ment may not be in a po­si­tion to give mon­e­tary re­lief like the US, he said the gov­ern­ment could con­sid­er writ­ing off T&TEC bills for ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed busi­ness sec­tors, in­clud­ing the re­tail and restau­rant in­dus­try.

Not­ing that the in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess for­eign ex­change is hav­ing an ad­verse ef­fect on the Small and Medi­um-sized En­ter­pris­es (SME) sec­tor, Singh said, “We are se­vere­ly dis­ad­van­taged against large con­glom­er­ates, es­pe­cial­ly in the glob­al eco­nom­ic cli­mate and the rav­ages of the pan­dem­ic. And we con­tin­ue to ap­peal for gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance in this re­gard for the sur­vival of busi­ness with­in the SME sec­tor.”

Singh said the cham­ber had ex­pect­ed the min­is­ter to ad­dress the fi­nan­cial con­cerns of MSMEs (mi­cro-small and medi­um sized), he said sur­plus funds giv­en to the com­mer­cial banks for the SME sec­tor should have been al­lo­cat­ed to ser­vice VAT re­funds.

He added, “En­tre­pre­neur­ial Re­lief Grant from NED­CO Fi­nan­cial ser­vices of­fered by NED­CO should be more heav­i­ly ad­ver­tised in print, elec­tron­ic and so­cial me­dia. The mi­cro-en­ter­prise sec­tor is in des­per­ate need of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance and is large­ly un­aware of the ser­vices ac­ces­si­ble through NED­CO.”

De­spite sev­er­al ap­peals, Singh said T&TEC has not giv­en any con­ces­sions.

“We con­tin­ue to ap­peal to the gov­ern­ment to ease the bur­den of the MSME sec­tor as we re­main closed.”

Not­ing that the pur­pose of the HSF fund is to pro­vide fi­nan­cial re­lief to the econ­o­my, he said, “ This is cer­tain­ly the time to use the HSF as an in­stru­ment to as­sist the MSME sec­tor. We have been gen­er­at­ing fis­cal bud­get deficits for sev­er­al years. The HSF can be the short term so­lu­tion to re­duce the deficit and stem fur­ther bor­row­ings.”