The Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion hopes the 2023 Bud­get in­cludes pro­vi­sions to deal with crime and food se­cu­ri­ty, while the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty hopes there’s suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion in the Bud­get to prop­er­ly se­cure T&T’s ports against drug and il­le­gal firearms en­try.

Those were some of the views of var­i­ous groups ahead of next Mon­day’s 2023 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. The Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in the Par­lia­ment.

SATT pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee said, “The big-tick­et item now is crime, which has par­tic­u­lar­ly been un­der­scored af­ter the re­cent at­tack at Pen­ny­wise, La Ro­main. All SATT mem­bers are con­cerned, es­pe­cial­ly about brazen day­light at­tacks and the type of weapons we see be­ing used. The fear fac­tor will al­so be high among work­ers and shop­pers.

“We hope the firearm users’ li­cence process is ex­pe­dit­ed. We had a meet­ing with the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, who as­sured FULs are be­ing is­sued to peo­ple who meet the cri­te­ria,” said Diptee.

He al­so said T&T’s cost of liv­ing and in­fla­tion re­quire pri­or­i­ty at­ten­tion in the Bud­get.

“We hope some of T&T’s in­creased oil rev­enue goes to pub­lic ser­vants and es­pe­cial­ly to fol­low up ini­tia­tives to the suc­cess­ful Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum. The Caribbean SATT was formed to aug­ment Gov­ern­ment’s work on food se­cu­ri­ty af­ter Cari­com’s bid to cut food im­port bills by 25 per cent by 2025,” he added.

If Gov­ern­ment’s fu­el sub­sidy is capped at $1 bil­lion, Diptee said it could mean fu­el price hikes at some point.

PEP leader Phillip Alexan­der added, “The most im­por­tant thing where bud­gets are con­cerned is ac­count­ing for what was done with last year’s al­lo­ca­tions, and more spe­cif­ic de­tails of next year’s al­lo­ca­tions. I’d like to see the ap­prox­i­mate $60 bil­lion we spend an­nu­al­ly bet­ter utilised. We need to get lean. I’d can­cel un­nec­es­sary pri­vate sec­tor con­tracts such as pris­on­er trans­port and make the in­vest­ment to build court­rooms ei­ther in or along­side jails.

“En­sure al­lo­ca­tion to se­cure T&T’s ports to end drug and il­le­gal firearms en­try - es­sen­tial to gov­er­nance go­ing for­ward. I’d al­so can­cel the pri­vate am­bu­lance con­tract and re­turn all fire sta­tions to emer­gency re­sponse sta­tions for para­medics, fire and oth­er emer­gen­cies,” he said.

Alexan­der ad­vo­cat­ed for the cre­ation of li­cens­es to trade in high vol­ume pro­duce to pro­tect against prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, “as well as to make wa­ter avail­able to farm­ers to in­crease food pro­duc­tion.”

He said ex­or­bi­tant fees charged by banks should be reined in and the Cen­tral Bank giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to set de­posit and cred­it in­ter­est rates.

“Ed­u­ca­tion should be moved ful­ly to the cloud with Smart Boards in class­es and tablets for the chil­dren. This alone can save bil­lions, pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment, save chil­dren hav­ing to labour un­der books, and stan­dard­ise the cur­ricu­lum.”