Richard Lord

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira an­nounced yes­ter­day the im­me­di­ate im­po­si­tion of high­er tax­es on cig­a­rettes and al­co­hol, in­creased the penal­ties for reck­less dri­ving, and sig­nalled that prop­er­ty own­ers will have to fork out high­er tax­es from Jan­u­ary 1, 2010.

This as Tesheira pre­sent­ed her sec­ond bud­get in as many years. It last­ed three hours and sev­en min­utes in the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber, Red House, Port-of-Spain. Dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion, Op­po­si­tion MPs, in­clud­ing Sub­has Pan­day, were heard say­ing the bud­get did not con­tain any new ini­tia­tives. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning was seen putting his fin­ger on his lips, ad­vis­ing Op­po­si­tion MPs to re­main silent and lis­ten.

The bud­get, in which the Gov­ern­ment projects it will spend $44.3 bil­lion from Oc­to­ber 1, 2009, to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010, was pred­i­cat­ed on a "con­ser­v­a­tive" oil price of US$55 a bar­rel, and a nat­ur­al gas price of US$2.75 per mil­lion cu­bic feet. Min­is­ter Tesheira said the pro­ject­ed deficit was $7.7 bil­lion, or 5.3 per cent of the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct. Con­firm­ing an $11.5 bil­lion bud­get short­fall in last year's pack­age, Tesheira said that was caused not on­ly by the de­cline in oil and gas prices, but al­so re­duced prices of oth­er petro­chem­i­cals.

Stiffer penal­ties

She out­lined "sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in penal­ties" for cer­tain road traf­fic of­fences, "in an ef­fort to main­tain or­der and safe­ty on our na­tion's roads and to de­ter road traf­fic of­fend­ers." The Gov­ern­ment was propos­ing that for use of a ve­hi­cle with­out park lights, im­prop­er over­tak­ing on the left side of the road, over­tak­ing traf­fic at a place dan­ger­ous to do so, ex­ceed­ing the spec­i­fied speed lim­it, the penal­ty would be in­creased from $200 to $2,000. And for us­ing the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion, delin­quent mo­torists would be fined $2,000, in­stead of $200.

For mo­torists who in­stal il­le­gal tints on their ve­hi­cles, "we pro­pose to ap­ply a fixed penal­ty of $2,000. "A fixed penal­ty of $2,000 will be ap­plied to mo­tor ve­hi­cles that are not fit­ted with seat belts." Tesheira stressed that Gov­ern­ment would ta­ble leg­is­la­tion to make the use of child re­straints in cars manda­to­ry for chil­dren five years of age or un­der. The ex­cise du­ty on lo­cal rum, beer and oth­er al­co­holic prod­ucts would be in­creased by 15 per cent from to­day. A 30 per cent in­crease is be­ing im­posed on those bev­er­ages from out­side the Caribbean.

Tesheira al­so said the Gov­ern­ment al­so pro­posed to in­tro­duce a new four-tiered prop­er­ty tax regime, based on the present mar­ket val­ues of prop­er­ties. "In the case of res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and agri­cul­tur­al prop­er­ties, the tax will be three per cent, five per cent and one per cent, re­spec­tive­ly," she added. She said Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles Trans­fer Tax is to be in­creased by 50 per cent.

She an­nounced a stim­u­lus pack­age for small con­trac­tors which would "stim­u­late" the con­struc­tion sec­tor via build­ing and re­fur­bish­ment of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, health cen­tres, schools, ear­ly child­hood care cen­tres, po­lice sta­tions, recre­ation cen­tres and city/bor­ough side­walks. The bud­get de­bate re­sumes on Fri­day at 10 am when the Op­po­si­tion will re­ply.

NEW MO­TOR TAX­ES

? Used cars oth­er than mo­tor­cy­cles over ten years old, from $100 to $150

? Used cars over sev­en years, but not more than ten years, from $900 to $1,350

? Used cars over five years, but not more than sev­en years old, from $2,000 to $3,000

? Used cars over two years old, but not more than five years old, from $3,000 to $4,500

? Used mo­tor­cy­cles, not ex­ceed­ing 250cc, from $100 to $150

? Used mo­tor­cy­cles ex­ceed­ing 250cc from $200 to $300

? And the cost of re­new­ing dri­vers' li­cences will in­crease from $200 to $500 every five years