Shas­tri Boodan

Cham­bers of Com­merce in Cen­tral are hop­ing that the Gov­ern­ment will not raise the cost of fu­el and add more tax­es to bur­den the pop­u­la­tion.

Richie Sookhai, the pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and Mukesh Ram­s­ingh, the pres­i­dent of the Cou­va-Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce spoke to Guardian Me­dia.

Sookhai said the econ­o­my was "ba­si­cal­ly run­ning on fumes" and "a bit stag­nant".

He said, "Some of the con­trac­tors are yet to be paid, we are now feel­ing the fall­out from the clo­sure of Petrotrin where a lot of the busi­ness ecosys­tem that was built around Petrotrin have piv­ot­ed their busi­ness mod­el else­where. Petrotrin was a huge ser­vice re­ceiv­er from a lot of these down­stream in­dus­tries. With the clo­sure of Petrotrin, we are now feel­ing the pinch where a lot of peo­ple are look­ing at how they spend their mon­ey."

Sookhai said the Gov­ern­ment should re­think the re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy. "While we haven’t gone to the streets and ri­ot yet, the econ­o­my is suf­fer­ing. It is wise that the Gov­ern­ment look at this, see­ing the high­er oil prices, they could look to hold their hand, at least for now, un­til things get a lit­tle bet­ter so that they can ul­ti­mate­ly reach their goal of cap­ping the fu­el sub­sidy."

He said a lot of Small and Mi­cro En­ter­pris­es (SMEs) failed to ben­e­fit from grants and loans of­fered in the last bud­get. "Some of these ini­tia­tives were im­ple­ment­ed but at the same time there were is­sues among the SMEs hav­ing the abil­i­ty to gain ac­cess due to not be­ing reg­u­larised, and many of them opt­ed not to go for­ward be­cause the cost to be­come reg­u­larised would have out­weighed the ben­e­fits of the grants it­self. With that be­ing said, a lot of the SMEs were not able to tap in­to this grant."

Mukesh Ramsingh, President of the Couva Point Lisas Chamber of Commerce.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Ram­s­ingh, mean­while, said with the state of the econ­o­my the Gov­ern­ment should re­think its move to raise the prices of fu­el and im­ple­ment prop­er­ty tax.

"Peo­ple are al­ready cau­tious with their spend­ing be­cause they have less and less in­come. Hikes in fu­el prices would cre­ate hard­ships across the board. Peo­ple’s salaries have not in­creased and to hit the na­tion with a hike in fu­el prices and prop­er­ty tax­es would lead to a na­tion of very un­hap­py peo­ple who are strug­gling to make ends meet, put food on the ta­ble and send their chil­dren to school.

"I must ask, is it in the na­tion­al in­ter­est to bur­den the pop­u­la­tion with ad­di­tion­al debt that may lead to des­ti­tu­tion and young peo­ple drop­ping out of school? The econ­o­my is bare­ly afloat as it is. We need more than a year to re­cov­er from the out­break of the pan­dem­ic."

Ram­s­ingh said the CPLCC was look­ing for­ward to more di­ver­si­ty and ini­tia­tives of­fered to boost the tourism sec­tor and new crime pre­ven­tion meth­ods.