Richard Lord

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan says she does not ex­pect any re­duc­tion in the gas sub­sidy or any hike in gas prices in next week's na­tion­al bud­get to be pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said so in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day. Asked if cit­i­zens can ex­pect­ed a re­duc­tion in the gas sub­sidy dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said she can­not say what Dook­er­an would an­nounce, but she has rec­om­mend­ed that there should be no re­duc­tion in the sub­sidy or in­crease in the price of gas un­til there was a vi­able al­ter­na­tive ef­fec­tive­ly in place.

She said she has al­ways main­tained that there was a need to es­tab­lish a prop­er Com­pressed Nat­ur­al Gas net­work in T&T, and on­ly when that was done can the sub­sidy be re­duced. Seep­er­sad-Bachan al­so said she did not ex­pect any hike in the price of gas to be an­nounced in the bud­get. She re­it­er­at­ed that while the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment had spo­ken about CNG as an al­ter­na­tive, noth­ing was done to se­ri­ous­ly de­vel­op the in­dus­try over the past sev­er­al years.

She said the Gov­ern­ment was do­ing all it can to en­sure that CNG was de­vel­oped to en­sure that there was an al­ter­na­tive so the need for gas would be re­duced, and as a di­rect con­se­quence, the sub­sidy will al­so come down . For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Tesheira said last week that any move to re­duce the $2 bil­lion an­nu­al sub­sidy would spell dis­as­ter for the man­u­fac­tur­ing and oth­er sec­tors.