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Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of the small and medi­um en­ter­prise (SME) sec­tor, de­spite what he de­scribed as a dif­fi­cult lega­cy left by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Re­spond­ing to re­cent calls from busi­ness groups for bet­ter sup­port for SMEs, Tan­coo said, “The PNM had its way of deal­ing with SMEs and the econ­o­my over the past decade, and some or­gan­i­sa­tions fa­cil­i­tat­ed them. I am grate­ful that some groups have found their voic­es now that the PNM is out of of­fice to make de­mands that should have been made over the past decade.”

He said the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion has made its po­si­tion clear on sup­port­ing growth across sec­tors that were “ef­fec­tive­ly sab­o­taged” un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.