GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

As T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as­sess­es the 2027 Bud­get, a com­mon mes­sage is emerg­ing from lead­ing pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions: the mea­sures an­nounced must ad­dress many long­stand­ing con­cerns, but their suc­cess will ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Busi­ness lead­ers said the bud­get con­tains sev­er­al en­cour­ag­ing ini­tia­tives; how­ev­er, they cau­tioned that tan­gi­ble re­sults, rather than pol­i­cy an­nounce­ments, would de­ter­mine whether the mea­sures strength­en eco­nom­ic growth and im­prove the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment.

The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­cham T&T) and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) wel­comed as­pects of the bud­get while stress­ing the im­por­tance of ex­e­cu­tion.

Am­cham T&T said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty would be close­ly mon­i­tor­ing how quick­ly an­nounced ini­tia­tives are trans­lat­ed in­to mean­ing­ful out­comes.

“Am­cham T&T firm­ly be­lieves the true mea­sure of Bud­get 2027 will not mere­ly be pol­i­cy an­nounce­ments, but the speed, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty with which these com­mit­ments are trans­lat­ed in­to mea­sur­able re­sults,” it ex­plained.

The cham­ber not­ed that busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to face chal­lenges in­clud­ing for­eign ex­change short­ages, ris­ing op­er­at­ing costs and ad­min­is­tra­tive in­ef­fi­cien­cies.

While wel­com­ing plans to mod­ernise pub­lic ser­vices and im­prove fis­cal man­age­ment, it said sus­tained im­ple­men­ta­tion would be re­quired to im­prove in­vestor con­fi­dence and eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the TTMA wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s re­newed fo­cus on the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and sup­port for lo­cal in­dus­try.

The as­so­ci­a­tion not­ed that man­u­fac­tur­ers con­tin­ue to face sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges but said mea­sures aimed at im­prov­ing busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness and fa­cil­i­tat­ing growth were pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments.

‘South projects wel­comed’

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC) Ki­ran Singh said sev­er­al an­nounce­ments con­tained in the bud­get could pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant boost to eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in south Trinidad, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pro­posed re­open­ing of the re­fin­ery.

“The down­stream ben­e­fits are tremen­dous and of course the for­eign ex­change fac­tor would have sig­nif­i­cant val­ue not on­ly to the south­ern re­gion, but of course the en­tire coun­try,” he added.

Singh al­so wel­comed progress on the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front De­vel­op­ment Project, de­scrib­ing it as a po­ten­tial­ly trans­for­ma­tive ini­tia­tive for the city.

He not­ed that work has al­ready com­menced on as­pects of the project and ex­pressed op­ti­mism about the role pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships could play in dri­ving fu­ture de­vel­op­ment.

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty was an­oth­er area high­light­ed by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Singh wel­comed re­ports of de­clin­ing crime lev­els and plans to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture across the coun­try.

“It was im­por­tant to see that we have low­er crime sta­tis­tics and with the in­crease we ex­pect the po­lice pres­ence to be ex­pand­ed,” he said.

‘Growth in­cen­tives need­ed’

Pres­i­dent of the San Juan Busi­ness­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Abrahim Ali de­scribed the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion as pos­i­tive over­all but said busi­ness­es are still look­ing for greater clar­i­ty on how Gov­ern­ment in­tends to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth and en­cour­age in­vest­ment among small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es.

“What peo­ple were look­ing for­ward to is the in­cen­tive to cre­ate growth in the econ­o­my, to dri­ve the small and mi­cro in­dus­tries, to stim­u­late them, to get them ex­cit­ed and in­vest­ing,” Ali said.

He not­ed that many of the de­tails busi­ness­es are seek­ing may emerge dur­ing the bud­get de­bate and through pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives an­nounced by in­di­vid­ual min­istries in the com­ing weeks.

“And the in­cen­tives to do that, we have to wait on the var­i­ous min­istries that will roll out what­ev­er ini­tia­tives they want to put out. So we await the bud­get de­bate that may bring that from the Min­istry of Trade, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the var­i­ous min­istries that could dri­ve the pri­vate sec­tor to stim­u­late the econ­o­my with the growth that we ex­pect in the coun­try,” he said.

Ali al­so ob­served that sev­er­al tax­es af­fect­ing busi­ness­es and con­sumers were left large­ly un­changed, while some of the new mea­sures are un­like­ly to place sig­nif­i­cant bur­dens on or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

“The new tax on elec­tric­i­ty for over 3,000 kilo­watts, those are things that we could live with be­cause it wouldn’t af­fect the small man on the ground,” he added.

‘Busi­ness re­form pri­or­i­ties’

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Bal­dath Ma­haraj, wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to al­lo­cate an ini­tial $20 mil­lion to­ward stud­ies and pre­lim­i­nary work for the long-dis­cussed Ch­agua­nas Ring Road project, de­scrib­ing it as an im­por­tant first step to­ward ad­dress­ing one of the most per­sis­tent chal­lenges fac­ing cen­tral Trinidad.

Ma­haraj not­ed that Ch­agua­nas serves as a crit­i­cal com­mer­cial hub con­nect­ing north, cen­tral and south Trinidad, but years of se­vere traf­fic con­ges­tion have neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, busi­ness ef­fi­cien­cy and cus­tomer ac­cess.

While sup­port­ing the ini­tia­tive, Ma­haraj said the cham­ber would like to see for­mal en­gage­ment with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty through­out the plan­ning phase to en­sure prac­ti­cal con­cerns are in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the fi­nal de­sign.

Tak­ing a broad­er view of the bud­get, Ma­haraj said the cham­ber sup­ports many of the pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives out­lined by Gov­ern­ment but stressed that im­ple­men­ta­tion re­mains the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor.