Gail Alexan­der

Dig deep! Dri­vers will feel the bite of the 2012-2013 bud­get im­me­di­ate­ly to­day with the price of pre­mi­um gas shoot­ing up to $5.75 per litre, an in­crease of 43.75 per cent. The gam­ing in­dus­try, once the fo­cus of the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, was al­so hit by PP bud­getary in­creas­es on gam­bling de­vices from yes­ter­day. These were among sev­er­al in­creas­es-as well as tax changes, grants and oth­er con­ces­sions-out­lined by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai in a $58.4 bil­lion pack­age. "We're at a turn­ing point in our growth dy­nam­ics...We've es­tab­lished a roadmap to bring our bud­get in­to bal­ance by 2016, if not be­fore," Howai said, af­ter a two-hour pre­sen­ta­tion at the Par­lia­ment cham­ber. The theme of Howai's maid­en bud­get was "Stim­u­lat­ing Growth, Gen­er­at­ing Pros­per­i­ty." The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry re­ceived the largest al­lo­ca­tion of $9.1 bil­lion. Howai's mid-term bud­get is the largest to date-$4 bil­lion more than the 2011/2012 bud­get of $54.6 bil­lion.

Full Bud­get-State­ment-2013

He bud­get­ed for a deficit of 7.669 bil­lion or 4.6 per cent of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct, sim­i­lar to the 2011-2012 bud­get deficit. He said Gov­ern­ment had tak­en a de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion to op­er­ate this year with a deficit, as this was re­quired to pro­vide the need­ed stim­u­lus at a point when the econ­o­my was emerg­ing from a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od. While not­ing strong eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors in T&T, Howai said the glob­al econ­o­my re­quired T&T to be watch­ful in mak­ing in­vest­ments. "The sit­u­a­tion re­quires a ju­di­cious mix of mea­sures. Fo­cus in this bud­get is to pro­vide a strong stim­u­lus to the econ­o­my, aimed at ac­cel­er­at­ing the growth mo­men­tum," he said. Howai's mix in­volves stim­u­lat­ing growth for in­creased rev­enue, re­fo­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture and build­ing a com­pet­i­tive econ­o­my. Howai added: "While we have re­vised reg­u­lar­ly our oil and non-oil tax regimes, evolv­ing and chang­ing do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions have com­pelled us to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the cur­rent tax struc­ture. I shall do so in fis­cal 2013." He said that in­volved three ar­eas: The land and build­ing (prop­er­ty) tax, the fu­el sub­sidy and over­all tax regime from per­son­al and cor­po­rate tax­es."

On the gaso­line sub­sidy, which Gov­ern­ment had been urged to ad­dress, Howai said: "I pro­pose to re­duce the sub­sidy on pre­mi­um gaso­line. "The price for pre­mi­um gaso­line will be close to the mar­ket price and would be fixed at $5.75 a litre. The new pric­ing struc­ture will take ef­fect from Oc­to­ber 2, 2012." Ahead of an­nounc­ing the full mea­sure, Howai had said in or­der to sup­port Gov­ern­ment's planned CNG con­ver­sion pro­gramme he pro­posed to ini­ti­ate a "grad­ual" re­duc­tion in the fu­el sub­si­dies be­gin­ning with the price of pre­mi­um gas. He said an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team will re­view ad­di­tion­al mea­sures aimed at fur­ther ad­dress­ing the re­duc­ing of the cur­rent lev­els of sub­sidy. Such mea­sures will be "pro­gres­sive­ly" in­tro­duced dur­ing 2013. Howai put the pub­lic on no­tice for re­turn of the prop­er­ty tax, a 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion is­sue. The PP de­clared a mora­to­ri­um on the tax af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice Howai said over the next year Gov­ern­ment would im­ple­ment a regime which would cov­er res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, agri­cul­tur­al and in­dus­tri­al land.

Howai al­so brought the gam­ing in­dus­try un­der more ef­fec­tive con­trol to cap­ture more rev­enue. He said: "In the short term and un­til the man­age­ment and con­trol struc­ture for the in­dus­try can be put in­to place, we will in­tro­duce reg­u­la­tions to man­age the in­dus­try. "These reg­u­la­tions will come in­to ef­fect on May 1, 2013. We al­so pro­pose to in­crease the tax­es levied on pri­vate mem­bers' clubs from Oc­to­ber 1, 2012." Tax­es on gam­ing ta­bles, such as bac­carat would range as much as $75,000 a year, while slot ma­chines and on­line gam­ing de­vice would cost $12,000, he said. Howai said the Cli­co and Hin­du Cred­it Union mat­ters have dragged on "for far too long" and he in­tend­ed to bring them to a close this year. He said as part of the over­all so­lu­tion Gov­ern­ment would in­cor­po­rate a new in­sur­ance com­pa­ny in­to which those tra­di­tion­al poli­cies and oth­er as­sets would be trans­ferred from Cli­co.

That new com­pa­ny, he said, would con­tin­ue to man­age the tra­di­tion­al poli­cies. Howai al­so an­nounced the Cli­co In­vest­ment Fund be­ing launched next month-and trad­ed on the Stock Ex­change in Jan­u­ary-plus tax ex­emp­tion on fund in­come.

Arrange­ments for HCU ben­e­fi­cia­ries over $75,000 would start on No­vem­ber 1, he said. He al­so an­nounced plans to deal with in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues. Among na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­cen­tives, he ex­tend­ed the pro­tec­tive ser­vices' non-tax­able $1,000 spe­cial al­lowance to all Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice from yes­ter­day . Pur­chase of CCTV cam­eras and dig­i­tal video record­ing equip­ment for home­own­ers, com­mu­ni­ty and busi­ness se­cu­ri­ty will now be ex­empt from cus­toms du­ties and Val­ue Added Tax. The dis­abil­i­ty as­sis­tance grant was in­creased by $200 a month to $1,500 a month. For chil­dren with med­ical­ly cer­ti­fied dis­abil­i­ties, this will rise from $800 to $1,000 a month from Feb­ru­ary 1, 2013. In­creas­es in Na­tion­al In­sur­ance ben­e­fits now ap­ply to sev­er­al cat­e­gories from ma­ter­ni­ty and fu­ner­al grants to sur­vivors' ben­e­fit. The self-em­ployed will al­so be in­clud­ed in the NIS?sys­tem. Howai an­nounced changes in the NIS?con­tri­bu­tion rate of 0.1 per cent for em­ploy­ees and 0.2 per cent for em­ploy­ers in 2013 and 2014. He pegged his pack­age on an oil and gas price of US$75 a bar­rel. Howai out­lined sev­er­al pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tors, say­ing the econ­o­my is at a turn­ing point. He ex­pect­ed 1.2 per cent eco­nom­ic growth this year. He pro­posed to achieve a bal­anced bud­get by es­tab­lish­ing a re­duc­tion in the equiv­a­lent of a min­i­mum of one per cent of GDP a year for the next four years. De­bate gets un­der­way at 10 am on Fri­day with Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley's re­ply.

WHERE?THE?$$?will go

•?Ed­u­ca­tion: $9.1 bil­lion

•?Health: $5.1 bil­lion

•Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty: $5.5 bil­lion

•Pub­lic?Util­i­ties: $3.7 bil­lion

•Hous­ing: $3.5 bil­lion

•Works: 2.4 bil­lion

•Trans­port: 1.6 bil­lion

•Agri­cul­ture: 1.3 bil­lion

•To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly: $2.3 bil­lion

•?Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan: $7.5 bil­lion

•To­tal rev­enue: $50.7 bil­lion

• Ex­pen­di­ture: $58.4 bil­lion

•?Oil rev­enue: $20 bil­lion

• Non-oil rev­enue: $30.6 bil­lion

OTH­ER NEW?PLANS:

• New naval plan to cut drug run­ning

• Rein­tro­duc­tion of high­way po­lice pa­trols

• Agri­cul­tur­al ven­tures with Guyana

• To­ba­go con­ces­sions from ho­tel room ex­pan­sion, in­te­grat­ed cam­pus and busi­ness in­cen­tives to air­port up­grade

• Ex­ten­sion of Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way to San­gre Grande, ad­di­tion­al ac­cess from Co­corite to Ch­aguara­mas

• La Brea port

• Pro­ce­dures to cut waste/abuse of GATE?pro­gramme

•?In­cen­tives for en­hanc­ing cre­ative in­dus­tries

• New her­itage city in Port-of-Spain

• Port-of-Spain pri­or­i­ty for drainage plans.

• Tax in­cen­tives to stim­u­late con­struc­tion, in­clud­ing mul­ti-storey car parks.

• Dri­ver's per­mit to re­main valid for five years from 2012, and there­after up­on re­new­al for ei­ther five years or ten years at a cost of $500/$1,000.

• First Cit­i­zens Bank, T&T Mort­gage Bank, T&T?Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny/HMB merg­er for pub­lic of­fer­ing.

• CEPEP,?URP?em­ploy­ees tran­si­tion­ing to pri­vate-sec­tor com­pa­nies.