Shas­tri Boodan

Crime and the short­age of Forex for SMEs were the ma­jor fac­tors af­fect­ing busi­ness­es in 2024 ac­cord­ing to De­o­raj Ma­hase, the Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC). 

Ma­hase was at the time de­liv­er­ing ad­dress­ing the CPLCC’s an­nu­al Christ­mas func­tion on Fri­day at the Cham­ber’s Cam­den Road, Cou­va fa­cil­i­ties. Ma­hase said the Cham­ber has been push­ing for more po­lice/army joint pa­trols and faster de­tec­tion rates. Ma­hase said the  CPLCC in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TT Po­lice Ser­vice plans to re­launch its CCTV pro­gram in the new year.

Ma­hase said small busi­ness­es de­pend heav­i­ly on cred­it cards to meet pay­ments for im­port­ed goods and raw ma­te­ri­als.  He urged the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate with oth­er busi­ness groups to pos­si­bly mod­i­fy their lo­cal op­er­a­tions to ex­port more and use lo­cal­ly sourced raw ma­te­ri­als where pos­si­ble.

He said the neg­a­tives of float­ing the TT Dol­lar would far out­weigh any ben­e­fits it may bring.  Ma­hase said the cham­ber al­so in­tends to tack­le de­mur­rage (a charge payable to the own­er of a char­tered ship on fail­ure to load or dis­charge the ship with­in the time agreed.) 

He said the sys­tems and meth­ods be­ing used to cal­cu­late de­mur­rage must be bet­ter ne­go­ti­at­ed to bring bet­ter ben­e­fits to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.