The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has re­spond­ed to the con­tri­bu­tion of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert’s read­ing of the Na­tion­al Bud­get, “Tenac­i­ty and Sta­bil­i­ty in the face of Glob­al Chal­lenges”, to­day in Par­lia­ment.

Pres­i­dent of the TTMA Tri­cia Coos­al stat­ed that the As­so­ci­a­tion com­mends the Gov­ern­ment on the part­ner­ship and di­a­logue it con­tin­ues to have with the pri­vate sec­tor to en­sure the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to sta­bilise and grow fol­low­ing the im­pact of COVID-19 and the on­go­ing Rus­sia-Ukraine war as ev­i­denced by the an­nounce­ment of an ex­pect­ed re­vised re­al GDP growth of 2% and growth of the non-en­er­gy sec­tor by the same 2%.

Coos­al com­ment­ed, “The im­por­tance of en­sur­ing the Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness was once again stressed by the Min­is­ter via the pledge of dig­i­ti­za­tion though the strength­en­ing of the Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Win­dow and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the elec­tron­ic fund trans­fer frame­work to al­low busi­ness­es to make pay­ments to the Gov­ern­ment by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty … these are need­ed and wel­comed ini­tia­tives.”

Coos­al al­so not­ed, “TTMA has ad­vo­cat­ed for a more ef­fi­cient tax col­lect­ing mech­a­nism, stress­ing the im­por­tance of widen­ing the tax net as op­posed to fur­ther bur­den­ing the al­ready com­pli­ant pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try. In this re­gard the TTMA looks for­ward to op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty in 2023 and an­tic­i­pates that this fa­cil­i­ty would al­low for greater ef­fi­cien­cies in the tax col­lec­tion.”

In an ef­fort to as­sist busi­ness on in­dus­tri­al parks, Coos­al not­ed “The As­so­ci­a­tion looks for­ward to Phase 3 of the mod­ern state of the art in­dus­tri­al park - Phoenix Park. The an­nounce­ment of Phase 3 and the even­tu­al roll out of a trade and ex­hi­bi­tion cen­tre at the in­dus­tri­al es­tate is wel­comed as many syn­er­gies ex­ist with TTMA’s an­nu­al Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion.”

Coos­al ac­knowl­edged, “The Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tia­tive to fur­ther the op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of the Man­u­fac­tur­ing Ap­pren­tice­ship pro­gramme and the Ex­port Boost­er Ini­tia­tive as well as in­creas­ing the al­lot­ment of the For­eign Ex­change fa­cil­i­ty at EX­IM Bank are pleas­ing de­liv­er­ables. The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to sig­nal the trust it places in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to con­tin­ue with­in a frame­work or pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship to lead the charge on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my as ev­i­dent by the 17% in­crease in ex­ports. We look for­ward to the specifics of the EX­IM fa­cil­i­ty, which has worked re­al­ly well for the SME ex­porters among our mem­ber­ship.”

The TTMA said it sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to the CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment goal to re­duce the re­gion’s ex­port bill by 25% by 2025 via the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of $300 Mil­lion in­to agri­cul­ture in­cen­tive and in­fra­struc­ture pro­grammes to as­sist with food se­cu­ri­ty and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in the agro pro­cess­ing sub-sec­tor of man­u­fac­tur­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the re­bate of $25,000.00 for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­new­able wind and so­lar en­er­gy in agri­cul­ture will sup­port the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of this sec­tor.

It al­so ap­plaud­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to SMEs via the in­jec­tion of $500 Mil­lion – in part­ner­ship with com­mer­cial banks - for long term guar­an­tee schemes for SMEs, guar­an­tee­ing 80% of loans for up to 10 years. This guar­an­tee, cou­pled with the in­crease in the max­i­mum fund­ing of ex­porTT’s Grand Fund Fa­cil­i­ty from $250,000 to $340,000, will work to strength­en SMEs’ com­pet­i­tive­ness and in­crease their con­tri­bu­tion to the ex­ports of the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

Coos­al not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment of VAT pay­ments of $4 Bil­lion in 2022, how­ev­er, she added, “The As­so­ci­a­tion hopes the dis­burse­ment of VAT re­fund con­tin­ues rapid­ly in the com­ing fis­cal since the SME sec­tor specif­i­cal­ly suf­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from cash flow when pay­ments are out­stand­ing. As a re­sult, TTMA looks for­ward to a con­tin­ued roll out for its mem­bers, in a time­ly man­ner, for fis­cal 2022-2023.

Min­is­ter Im­bert is sched­uled to par­tic­i­pate in a post-bud­get event with TTMA mem­ber­ship to­mor­row, to dis­cuss how the new mea­sures are go­ing to help the sec­tor. We look for­ward to this en­gage­ment where many ques­tions will be asked and an­swers will be pro­vid­ed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and oth­er lead­ing ex­perts.

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