Strategic Plan to target tax reform

A new four-year Strategic and Opera-tional Plan unveiled by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) on Wednesday lists the formal screening of membership applications to seek to determine possible links between businesses and drugs, money-laundering and counterfeit goods.

It is one of six key initiatives which the Chamber will be seeking to pursue as part of a package of measures aimed at rendering the Chamber more relevant to the needs and concerns of the local business community.

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The Strategic Plan lists the proliferation of drugs, money-laundering and trading in counterfeit goods as being among issues which the Chamber will be seeking to tackle since these are considered “critical to the macro-economic environment and were likely to have significant adverse effects on businesses”

The Plan which outlines the Chamber’s strategic goals and operational plans between 2008 and 2012 also lists  tax reform advocacy, skills retention initiatives to respond to the prevailing migration rate and collaborative initiatives with other stakeholders to respond to local crime and security challenges, as being among the priority concerns of the Chamber over the next four years.

GCCI Executive Secretary Jean Bacchus told Stabroek Business that the Plan seeks to reverse a period of relative inactivity and to serve as a guide in the implementation of “a more pro-active work programme.”

The Chamber’s list of priority concerns returns to the familiar and controversial theme of tax reforms, an issue on which government and the private sector have ‘locked horns’ frequently since the implementation of VAT at the beginning of last year.  The document  lists Value Added Tax, Corporate Taxes and income taxes as being part of a regimen of high taxation which it says has served to reduce both disposable income and savings and says that its programme will include continued advocacy aimed at bringing about reform of the existing tax regime.

The GCCI’s pronouncement on taxation and its planned tax reform initiatives come in the wake of several sharp exchanges between President Bharrat Jagdeo and some of the country’s leading private sector officials particularly over calls by the business community for a lowering of the present 16 per cent VAT rate and a reduction in the levels of corporate taxes.

Meanwhile, the GCCI Strategic and Operational Plan also outlines initiatives to respond to migration which it says is impacting on employee retention in the private sector and affecting training and development plans.

The Plan will focus on steering human resource development initiatives to help companies secure and retain employees while the Chamber, which is itself suffering from an acute shortage of skills will be seeking to strengthen its own human resource base by developing a partnership with the University of Guyana aimed at securing two unpaid interns annually from the University’s  Business Management programme to serve in its secretariat. The Chamber’s plans to enhance resource mobilization also includes partnering   with donor agencies in order to secure technical and staff support and financial assistance to enable the consolidation of its infrastructure building programme.

The four-year plan also addresses crime and security issues and their implications for the buoyancy of the business sector. It points out that increased crime continues to impact negatively on investment and tourism and has also resulted in a reduction in business hours. And the Strategic Plan indicates that the GCCI will be seeking to partner with other organizations to examine the phenomena of deviant behaviour including crime.

Threats posed to the coastal residential and commercial communities through the effects of climate change is also listed among the key concerns of the Chamber and its Strategic Plan indicates that the organization will be seeking to have a greater say in national  discourses and policy formulation in the area of climate change.

And according to Bacchus the advent of the four-year Plan seeks to set the GCCI  on a path of “radical departure” from what she conceded was a period of relative inactivity. She pointed out that the report had spoken to a number of critical issues including the “reactive orientation” of the Chamber, the seeming lack of commitment of its members and the absence of a Code of Conduct for members. Bacchus told Stabroek Business that in the period ahead the GCCI will be seeking to correct those weaknesses on the way to building a stronger foundation for the Chamber.