The Min­istry of Trade and the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers are chal­leng­ing each oth­er over the true num­ber of re­tail busi­ness­es that will be forced to close down be­cause of the eco­nom­ic fall­out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Yes­ter­day, the min­istry said it was “un­re­al­is­tic” that an es­ti­mat­ed 6,000 busi­ness­es will re­main per­ma­nent­ly closed when the re­tail sec­tor is fi­nal­ly re­opened on Mon­day.

Co-or­di­na­tor of the con­fed­er­a­tion Jai Lelad­hars­ingh had told Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day that based on a sur­vey done by the or­gin­sa­tion, about 6,000 out of 17,000 mi­cro, small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es are fac­ing eco­nom­ic dec­i­ma­tion.

But the min­istry is ques­tion­ing that num­ber and not­ed that a copy of the sur­vey had not been pro­vid­ed to it.

“Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), as of 2019, the sec­tor com­prised ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,656 busi­ness es­tab­lish­ments, con­tribut­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 13 per cent or ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$20.3 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly to the coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) and em­ploys in ex­cess of 78,000 per­sons. It is, there­fore, un­re­al­is­tic that 6,000 busi­ness en­ti­ties in the re­tail sec­tor will re­main closed,” a re­lease from the min­istry said yes­ter­day.

The Trade Min­istry al­so said it has ac­cel­er­at­ed the out­stand­ing VAT re­funds to busi­ness­es to as­sist their cash flow dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. This was one rec­om­men­da­tion that had been put for­ward by Lelad­hars­ingh.

Oth­er mea­sures in­clud­ed in­creased sup­ply of Forex, a con­cern that has been raised by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, a tax amnesty and $20,000 grants for mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es gen­er­at­ing less than $1 mil­lion in an­nu­al rev­enues un­der the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO).

“In or­der to ad­dress the fi­nanc­ing con­straints faced by man­u­fac­tur­ers and im­porters in terms of the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change to fi­nance im­ports of ba­sic food, es­sen­tial items and in­puts in­to the pro­duc­tion process, the Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$400 mil­lion via the EX­IM­BANK Ltd.”

The Trade Min­istry added that soft loans had been pro­vid­ed to cred­it unions to as­sist busi­ness peo­ple, along with the SME Stim­u­lus Loan Guar­an­tee Pro­gramme. Un­der this pro­gramme, it said a Gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed loan was of­fered for a max­i­mum of five years with a two-year mora­to­ri­um on prin­ci­pal pay­ments.

“The Gov­ern­ment guar­an­tees 75 per cent of the loan and no pay­ment is re­quired by the cus­tomer for two years. El­i­gi­ble SMEs would be able to ac­cess be­tween TT$75,000 to TT$325,000 based on their an­nu­al sales rev­enue to cov­er salaries, op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es and the pur­chase of raw ma­te­ri­als. The loan has ze­ro per cent in­ter­est. The Min­istry of Fi­nance is giv­ing at­ten­tion to the terms of these arrange­ments.”

It al­so said that grants had been arranged for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The Trade Min­istry al­so said the Gov­ern­ment has main­tained some as­pects of the re­tail sec­tor op­er­a­tions by al­low­ing dis­count stores, mar­kets, su­per­mar­kets, fruit stalls or shops, veg­etable stalls or shops, agri­cul­tur­al shops, bak­eries, and “par­lours,” phar­ma­cies and hard­wares to be opened.

“En­er­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and oth­er sec­tors re­mained sub­stan­tial­ly opened,” the min­istry added.

How­ev­er, Lelad­hars­ingh yes­ter­day said he was stand­ing by his da­ta, which was gath­ered and col­lat­ed be­tween Oc­to­ber 2020 and May 2021. 

“Has the Min­istry done any sur­veys re­gard­ing how SMEs are cop­ing dur­ing this lock­down and the pres­ence of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and if they did not, how can they re­fute this da­ta?” he asked.

He re­vealed that there is a large un­stud­ied in­for­mal sec­tor com­pris­ing of un­reg­is­tered mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es, in­sist­ing that his fig­ure of 6,000 was not un­re­al­is­tic.

“A quick sur­vey was con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine the re­silience and re­cov­ery of the MSME (Mi­cro, Small, and Medi­um) sec­tor be­tween Oc­to­ber 2020 and May 2021. Giv­en the pres­ence of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the lock­down, it was a se­ri­ous chal­lenge for these SMEs to re­cov­er. Ow­ing to their size, their re­silience is quite lim­it­ed, as they can han­dle on­ly a lim­it­ed amount of debt,” he said.

Asked what method­ol­o­gy was used to gath­er and col­late the sur­vey, Lelad­hars­ingh said: “ The method­ol­o­gy used were tele­phone calls, ex­pert opin­ions, sec­ondary da­ta and trend analy­sis. At the time da­ta was gath­ered, it was not meant to be shared or pub­lished. It was a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment to de­ter­mine the sur­viv­abil­i­ty of the SMEs.”

The con­fed­er­a­tion com­pris­es over 15 mem­bers, in­clud­ing busi­ness cham­bers, busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions and busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions.

On Tues­day, Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud said the fig­ure pre­sent­ed by Lelad­hars­ingh was far high­er than he would have ex­pect­ed. In the cap­i­tal city, he said about 10 per cent or 15 per cent of small busi­ness­es had closed down. In San Fer­nan­do, Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said 25 per cent of busi­ness­es, rough­ly about 200 lo­cat­ed in and around the city have per­ma­nent­ly closed their doors.