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The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) have re­leased man­i­festos which men­tioned small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SME) and while busi­ness cham­bers across the coun­try are un­hap­py with the state of this sec­tor, they are hop­ing that whichev­er par­ty wins the next gen­er­al elec­tion, it takes the im­por­tance of SMEs in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

Busi­ness lead­ers who spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian made it clear that as pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions, they do not sup­port any po­lit­i­cal par­ty but in their analy­sis of the man­i­festos, they want to en­sure that SMEs thrive.

On Fri­day, the Min­istry of Fi­nance an­nounced that SMEs would ac­cess up to US$50,000 a month to pay in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness ex­pens­es through a fa­cil­i­ty man­aged by the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of T&T (Ex­im­bank).