The Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has said that while Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed an op­ti­mistic 2023 Na­tion­al Bud­get, it re­mains re­served about sig­nif­i­cant im­pacts on the econ­o­my.

It is­sued a state­ment fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2023 Bud­get in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day.

"While the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed an op­ti­mistic 2023 Na­tion­al Bud­get, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) re­mains re­served about sig­nif­i­cant im­pacts on the econ­o­my.

De­spite the on­go­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges posed by in­fla­tion, which have been height­ened with the on­go­ing Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict and geo-po­lit­i­cal ten­sions, the wind­fall rev­enue has seen the bud­get deficit re­duced to $2 bil­lion, from $9 bil­lion in 2022.

The es­ti­mat­ed $8 bil­lion rev­enue was de­rived from the in­creas­es to prices of TT’s main ex­port com­modi­ties of oil, nat­ur­al gas, and am­mo­nia.

Giv­en the rea­son­able bench­mark for en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices, sev­er­al ini­tia­tives out­lined in the Bud­get such as cash­less trans­ac­tions, in­fra­struc­ture projects, health, hous­ing, in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy and ed­u­ca­tion kept in line with the Bud­get’s theme “Tenac­i­ty and Sta­bil­i­ty in the face of glob­al chal­lenges.”

Notwith­stand­ing this, the Min­is­ter an­nounced an in­crease in fu­el prices. While the T&T Cham­ber un­der­stands the need to lim­it the fu­el sub­sidy, it is con­cerned about the im­pact that this will have on in­fla­tion and the pop­u­la­tion at this time.

More im­por­tant­ly, Gov­ern­ment re-it­er­at­ed its in­ten­tion to sup­port Mi­cro, Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (MSMEs), and with the en­gage­ment the pri­vate sec­tor there can be sig­nif­i­cant and strate­gic growth of sev­er­al sec­tors.

This is crit­i­cal for the growth of the econ­o­my, as a MSMEs ac­count for a ma­jor por­tion of the pri­vate sec­tor and the Cham­ber wel­comes the new long-term loan guar­an­tee pro­gramme.

While we are heart­ened with the in­vest­ment in agri­cul­ture, the Cham­ber ques­tions what trans­for­ma­tion­al im­pact the in­cen­tives would have on the sec­tor.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Cham­ber looks for­ward to the full op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) which would al­low for a fair and ef­fi­cient rev­enue col­lec­tion.

In keep­ing with the theme of the ease of do­ing busi­ness, we know that many of the Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion mea­sures are on­go­ing and ur­gent im­ple­men­ta­tion should be pur­sued to fa­cil­i­tate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for busi­ness."

SEE MORE: Bud­get 2023: Air­bridge, seabridge, fu­el prices in­crease