TT Chamber cautious

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TT Chamber logo

A cautious approach is being taken by the TT Chamber of Industry and Commerce in response to Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s optimism about the economy, as expressed in his presentation of the mid-year budget review.

“We remain somewhat cautious as the optimism is largely based on increases in energy production and, more importantly, increases in prices. While the former was expected, the latter was in excess of the government’s own projections and serves to highlight our continued dependence on energy endowments. We were nevertheless encouraged by other issues addressed by the minister.” The chamber cited Imbert’s plan to, “in the near future”, bring revenue authority legislation to Parliament, improved fiscal transparency, the move towards more public-private partnerships and the decision to maintain energy price assumptions from the October 2017 presentation of the 2017-2018 budget.

Another point of interest was the soon to be launched national investment fund (NIF), for which an initial public offering (IPO) is set to be held in June.

“It is imperative that there should be a high level of transparency and good governance, particularly with respect to the value of the shares. We are also interested in the balance of the shares which are not earmarked for the NIF.”

Concern was expressed about TT’s continued dependence on energy sector revenue.

“We would have liked (Imbert’s) presentation to have been focused more on transformational measures.

While we appreciate that the minister could not speak to every issue in detail, we hope that other major issues such as economic diversification will be addressed subsequently, with more specifics.”

The TT Chamber, like the TT Manufacturers’ Association, also called on government to address the issue of value-added tax (VAT) refunds, saying “given the current optimistic outlook, we expect...VAT refunds to businesses will now be addressed expeditiously.”

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