It is an excellent budget. This was the comment of Prime Minister Patrick Manning, minutes after the budget presentation at the Red House in Port-of-Spain, yesterday. He said he was "very satisfied."
Manning believed that enough was delivered to the people of Trinidad and Tobago in the 2009/2010 budget. "Yes, in the context of the economic circumstances of the world and in T&T, I think we have done quite well," he said. Manning said it was necessary to predicate the Government's fiscal package for the next year on conservative prices for oil and gas of US$55 per barrel and a gas price of US$2.75 per million cubic feet. "We tried to be very realistic to see what is happening in the international market," he said. "It is always difficult to predict these things, but we sought to do just that and we were very conservative and we were going on the side of caution."
Over the last year, reduced energy prices prompted more than one budget revision from the Government, along with its state-expenditure plans.
The price of oil has since recovered to reach at least US$70 per barrel up from a low of US$40, but gas prices continued on a downward spiral to US$2.76 for each million cubic feet, its lowest price since 2002.