The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries says it was op­ti­mistic that when Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert be­gan his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day by stat­ing his top pri­or­i­ty for fis­cal 2020, it was ex­pan­sion of ex­ports.

In a state­ment the as­so­ci­a­tion said of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to the TTC­SI was the pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of MICE tourism as an area of fo­cus for rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

TTC­SI said it has been in talks with of­fi­cials about de­vel­op­ment of the MICE clus­ter in Trinidad and is con­fi­dent that this sec­tor has tremen­dous po­ten­tial.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said a num­ber of ini­tia­tives men­tioned, in­clud­ing in­creased tax al­lowance for cre­ative in­dus­tries, re­moval of tax­es and du­ties on in­puts, and re­sources for reg­is­tered farm­ers will di­rect­ly im­pact the TTC­SI’s grow­ing mem­ber­ship and we look for­ward to ad­di­tion­al de­tails on these ini­tia­tives in the com­ing days.

“We wel­come ad­di­tion­al de­tail from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance with re­gards to the pro­posed three bil­lion dol­lars of In­ter­est Bear­ing-Gov­ern­ment Bonds for all el­i­gi­ble VAT reg­is­tered busi­ness­es, to meet ar­rears as the de­lays ac­cess­ing VAT re­funds has had an ad­verse im­pact on many lo­cal busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing the TTC­SI. We ac­knowl­edge that the eco­nom­ic cli­mate is very un­cer­tain and that a fine line has to be walked be­tween fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and the need for eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus and so­cial spend­ing,” the state­ment said.

TTC­SI said, how­ev­er, “we do rec­om­mend that clear time­lines be set for a re­turn to a bal­anced na­tion­al bud­get.”

“The TTC­SI and its 47 mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions, rep­re­sent­ing more than 75 per cent of the lo­cal ser­vices sec­tor, stands ready to work with the Gov­ern­ment on sus­tain­able and in­clu­sive plans for eco­nom­ic growth, na­tion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­port de­vel­op­ment,” the re­lease al­so said.