Gail Alexan­der

The 2013-2014 bud­get is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered ear­ly next month, it has been con­firmed.Con­fir­ma­tion came soon af­ter the new par­lia­men­tary ses­sion was launched on Fri­day.Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said the bud­get will be the next fo­cus of at­ten­tion and the "num­bers are cur­rent­ly be­ing crunched by the Fi­nance Min­istry."Fol­low­ing last Fri­day's cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the Fourth Ses­sion of the Tenth Par­lia­ment, both the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es of Par­lia­ment have gone on a break.

It is ex­pect­ed Par­lia­ment will re­sume by the sec­ond to last week of Au­gust, Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day.It is pro­ject­ed that the first or­der of busi­ness will be sev­er­al out­stand­ing bills, in­clud­ing leg­is­la­tion to re­vamp the in­sur­ance sec­tor and oth­er bills. Fol­low­ing this, the 2014 bud­get is ex­pect­ed to be pre­sent­ed.

So far, bud­get con­sul­ta­tions have been held with var­i­ous groups and stake­hold­ers in re­cent months and some are still on­go­ing. In­ter­ac­tion be­tween the Fi­nance Min­istry and oth­er min­istries is now in the ad­vanced stages of their re­spec­tive bud­get sub­mis­sions, of­fi­cials said.Two weeks ago, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai said the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with a date in mind, but the date was yet to be ap­proved by Cab­i­net be­fore it was an­nounced, he had added.

PP ad­min­is­tra­tion sources said the Gov­ern­ment is aim­ing to com­plete the usu­al two-week bud­get de­bate in time for the cam­paign pe­ri­od for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls. These are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due by the end of Oc­to­ber. The life of re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions end­ed last month. At this point of the plan­ning process, sources hint­ed the bud­get may not go be­yond the 2013 fig­ure of $58 bil­lion

Though some be­lieve the 2014 pack­age may large­ly con­tain elec­tion "sweet­ners," it is al­so ex­pect­ed to in­clude the re­in­state­ment of the prop­er­ty tax, which Howai had sig­nalled in the last bud­get. This fol­lows a hia­tus on the tax af­ter the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion, in which it was a key elec­tion is­sue.

Fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's state­ments on Fri­day about the Gov­ern­ment's leg­isla­tive agen­da for the next ses­sion of Par­lia­ment, bud­get con­tents are al­so ex­pect­ed to in­clude in­creased fo­cus on health­care and se­cu­ri­ty, as well as ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial de­vel­op­ment.Some as­pects in the works this week in­clude tweak­ing cer­tain fi­nan­cial streams to serve as busi­ness in­cen­tives, sources said.

Pro­pos­als will soon to be sent to Cab­i­net to free up man­u­fac­tur­ers from pay­ing Val­ue Added Tax. The T&T Guardian was al­so told this will un­lock bot­tle­necks now af­fect­ing cer­tain busi­ness sec­tors.Sources said man­u­fac­tur­ers cur­rent­ly pay VAT and have to wait a long time to get re­funds from the Gov­ern­ment. They said the over­all sum of mon­ey re­ceived by the Gov­ern­ment–which then re­turns VAT re­funds to busi­ness­men–is about $300 mil­lion.

In­stead of the cur­rent sys­tem, it is pro­posed that man­u­fac­tur­ers will not have to pay VAT. An of­fi­cial deal­ing with the pro­pos­al added: "Rather than Gov­ern­ment hold­ing on to busi­ness peo­ple's re­funds for an un­fair­ly long time, this pro­pos­al will al­low busi­ness peo­ple more cap­i­tal to be­come more com­pet­i­tive and they will not have to re­sort to bank loans to seek funds for ex­pan­sion."The sys­tem as it stands puts them at a se­ri­ous dis­ad­van­tage so it needs iron­ing out," the of­fi­cial said.

Ef­forts will be made in the plan to en­sure there are no un­scrupu­lous claimants.Talks are cur­rent­ly be­ing held with the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion to fi­nalise this par­tic­u­lar busi­ness in­cen­tive, which was de­scribed as part of the Gov­ern­ment's thrust to in­crease ease of do­ing busi­ness in T&T.

Min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry Rudy In­dars­ingh yes­ter­day said the Gov­ern­ment, in the up­com­ing bud­get, was aim­ing to deal with sec­tors im­pact­ing on the pub­lic as pri­or­i­ty, to en­sure un­em­ploy­ment and in­fla­tion re­mained at cur­rent low lev­els and that the pop­u­la­tion "at the bot­tom of the earn­ing lad­der ac­cessed goods and ser­vices."The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, plan­ning a $4.9 bil­lion pro­gramme for To­ba­go for 2014, has re­quest­ed that sum in the na­tion­al pack­age.

But at least one gov­ern­ment To­ba­go MP has said this is un­re­al­is­tic.Mean­while, af­ter the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter's trav­el agen­da for the lat­ter half of the year in­cludes a state vis­it in ear­ly No­vem­ber to Chi­na, where she will open T&T's em­bassy in Bei­jing, as well as at­tend­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence in Sri Lan­ka from No­vem­ber 15-17, the Gov­ern­ment con­firmed.