Tobago Chamber hopes Budget helps ease island’s financial woes

  • Sep, Sat, 2024
  • ICTS


Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce To­ba­go Di­vi­sion chair­man Cur­tis Williams is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress To­ba­go’s fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, in­clud­ing un­paid debts. He says he hopes for bet­ter ac­cess to for­eign ex­change for small busi­ness­es in the up­com­ing bud­get.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Williams said the is­land’s eco­nom­ic life­line is de­pend­ing on a boost to dri­ve ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The THA (To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) has been ad­vo­cat­ing for in­creased fund­ing to ad­dress some of the unique chal­lenges To­ba­go faces … with some out­stand­ing bills that they have in­her­it­ed, a cou­ple mil­lion dol­lars well. And these sup­pli­ers, providers, have been con­tend­ing for their funds. So, with the in­crease in fund­ing, it would def­i­nite­ly ad­dress some of those needs or de­sires that the THA has, and re­al­ly take care of some of those out­stand­ing bills,” he said.

He lament­ed that busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty has been slug­gish for some time and is­sues with get­ting for­eign ex­change have made do­ing busi­ness dif­fi­cult.

“The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance promised that the forex chal­lenge for the SMEs would be tak­en care of through the Ex­im­Bank. My last con­ver­sa­tion with Ex­im­Bank is they are wait­ing on the min­is­ter. We are wait­ing as well. We hope the min­is­ter does give us what was promised,” Williams added.

Aside from a larg­er cut for de­vel­op­ment, he said he wants to see funds set aside to clear bills in­curred from the Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill dis­as­ter.

“If they are go­ing to give $100 mil­lion, say what it is for and put it aside from the al­lo­ca­tion for To­ba­go. We re­al­ly need an ease-up in To­ba­go. The econ­o­my has been slug­gish in the last cou­ple of years, we need to see some­thing hap­pen­ing.”

Williams al­so spoke of the need for im­proved in­fra­struc­ture and tourism in To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly with the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2025.

He called for more in­cen­tives to at­tract ho­tels, like the pend­ing Mar­riott project.

The cham­ber boss al­so hoped to hear of ini­tia­tives that would lead to im­prove­ments on the sea and air bridge.





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