SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Free­lance Writer

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce is pleased that the Gov­ern­ment wants to pay pub­lic ser­vants their back­pay by Christ­mas.

Speak­ing at the cham­ber’s post-Bud­get me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert com­plet­ed his 2024 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, pres­i­dent of the cham­ber, Mukesh Ram­s­ingh, said this move will al­low mon­ey to be in­ject­ed in­to the lo­cal econ­o­my.

But he al­so said the cham­ber was very con­cerned about how prop­er­ties will be val­ued for prop­er­ty tax­es. Ram­s­ingh said while costs were men­tioned in the Bud­get for low-in­come hous­es, peo­ple in mid­dle- and high-in­come prop­er­ties are in lim­bo and the Gov­ern­ment should ex­pect ob­jec­tions when prop­er­ty own­ers are no­ti­fied come 2024.

He said the cham­ber wants more in­for­ma­tion on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change and wants forex to be dis­trib­uted fair­ly to busi­ness­es who need it. He said while the min­is­ter has pushed a lot of digi­ti­sa­tion for pay­ments, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion was not in­clud­ed in the on­line pay­ments. Ram­s­ingh said this of­ten re­sults in busi­ness­peo­ple wast­ing time in the bank to get a cer­ti­fied cheque for Cus­toms.

Re­gard­ing hous­ing, the Cou­va Point Lisas cham­ber pres­i­dent said ex­tra ac­tiv­i­ty in this sec­tor will serve to keep the con­struc­tion sec­tor go­ing. He added the cham­ber wel­comes the re-in­tro­duc­tion of the book grant but called for the Gov­ern­ment to move away from print­ed books to on­line ver­sions.

On the is­sue of the new min­i­mum wage of $20.50, Ram­s­ingh was not en­thused, as he said most em­ploy­ers are al­ready pay­ing this rate.

Mean­while, Derek Joseph, pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of Agri­cul­tur­al and Non-Fi­nan­cial Co­op­er­a­tives, said de­spite the an­nounce­ments re­gard­ing the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, the Gov­ern­ment should be­gin dis­cus­sions with ex­ist­ing stake­hold­ers to move the sec­tor for­ward.

Robin Nar­i­nesingh, pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, de­scribed the Bud­get as good but called for clar­i­ty when it comes to the col­lec­tion of prop­er­ty tax.

Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Chris­t­ian Ram­per­sad said there should be im­me­di­ate re­lief for small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) who can­not run busi­ness­es on US$5,000 a month on cred­it cards.

“We need this soon­er,” he said.