Small busi­ness own­ers op­er­at­ing in com­mu­ni­ties along the East-West Cor­ri­dor say they are hope­ful that fea­tures of this year’s bud­get will fo­cus on stim­u­lat­ing growth while ad­dress­ing the needs of the gen­er­al pub­lic.

On Mon­day, the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce (AM­CHAM), re­spond­ing to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s 2026 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, urged the Gov­ern­ment to pri­ori­tise pri­vate-sec­tor liq­uid­i­ty by im­ple­ment­ing a struc­tured pro­gramme to elim­i­nate the VAT re­fund back­log, which it said rep­re­sents vi­tal work­ing cap­i­tal for small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es (SMEs).

The cham­ber al­so high­light­ed sev­er­al key points from the re­view, in­clud­ing the re­duc­tion of the pri­ma­ry deficit from $2.93 bil­lion to $101 mil­lion at mid-year, a “sta­ble” out­look from Moody’s, and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­moval from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s black­list.