Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of the small and medi­um en­ter­prise (SME) sec­tor, de­spite what he de­scribed as a dif­fi­cult lega­cy left by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Re­spond­ing to re­cent calls from busi­ness groups for bet­ter sup­port for SMEs, Tan­coo said, “The PNM had its way of deal­ing with SMEs and the econ­o­my over the past decade, and some or­gan­i­sa­tions fa­cil­i­tat­ed them. I am grate­ful that some groups have found their voic­es now that the PNM is out of of­fice to make de­mands that should have been made over the past decade.”

He said the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion has made its po­si­tion clear on sup­port­ing growth across sec­tors that were “ef­fec­tive­ly sab­o­taged” un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

“This Gov­ern­ment has open­ly stat­ed its com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of the SME sec­tor and oth­er groups which were ef­fec­tive­ly sab­o­taged by the pre­vi­ous regime,” Tan­coo said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the re­cent pub­lic com­men­tary, Tan­coo not­ed the shift in tone and ex­pec­ta­tions since the new gov­ern­ment took of­fice.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate the con­fi­dence of com­men­ta­tors in our abil­i­ty as a less than one-month-old gov­ern­ment to do what the PNM couldn’t and didn’t do in ten years,” he said.

He added that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to fol­low through on its promis­es and is open to col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“We re­main com­mit­ted to build­ing the SME sec­tor and I open­ly wel­come all who can con­tribute to this ini­tia­tive,” Tan­coo said.