American Chamber of Commerce (Amcham) CEO Nirad Tewarie has said his membership hopes for “better business conditions within our neighbourhood” so that they could expand.
He was responding to questions on the Prime Minister’s endorsement for businesses to begin looking to Venezuela for business, despite the challenges that came with US sanctions, at Amcham's launch of the Tech Hub Islands Summit (THIS) 2023 on Thursday.
Tewarie said while he had not seen the comments: “Our members are looking to do business wherever the business conditions are right.
“We hope that business conditions within our neighbourhood continue to improve so that we can expand our business activities and our relations with our neighbours.”
Venezuela ranked 188 out of 190 countries according to the World Bank’s latest annual ratings –which compare and rank countries against each other based on each country’s regulatory environments.
It got the same ranking in an index of trading across borders, according to tradingandeconomics.com, and was ranked 181 out of 185 economies for investor protection, noting that it had low marks in each of the indicators, including soundness of banks, ease of access to loans, control of corruption, country capacity to retain and attract talent and domestic market size.
TMF Group, a Dutch multinational professional services firm, said on its website that trading across borders could take longer than a month-two months to be completed – 49 days to export and 71 days to import. It also costs more than double the OECD average for trading.
Gov.UK, in its guidance on overseas business risk guidelines with a focus on Venezuela, pointed out that since 2006 the Venezuelan government has pursued a policy of assuming state control of strategic sectors in the economy for the purpose of national development.
The oil, power, metals and mining and cement industries are all controlled by the state.
TMF Group also said there were 71 tax payments businesses needed to make, taking an average of 792 business hours to process.
Registering a business in Venezuela is a 20-step process which could take more than eight months to complete, according to doingbusiness.org, with some applications taking between a month and three months to be completed. Among the processes which take the longest are registering with the local mercantile registry (34 days), registering at the social security institute (130 days) and getting a licence from a competent municipality (50 days).
[caption id="attachment_1019351" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Venezuelans wait to collect passports outside the embassy in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 2022. - File photo/Grevic Alvarado[/caption]
In comparison, TT's business registration has to be completed within three months.
An InvesTT guideline on registering businesses said sole proprietors, partnerships and limited-liability companies must complete the first step in the registration process – reserving a business name.
For the second step, limited-liability companies' file articles of inc
