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Monday, February 3, 2025

Imbert hits poor man hard in $57.6B Budget as gas prices go up again

by

Gail Alexander
860 days ago
20220927

Mo­torists be­gan pay­ing high­er prices for Pre­mi­um, Su­per and Diesel fu­el, and kerosene, yes­ter­day.

And from Jan­u­ary, se­nior cit­i­zens will have to pay $50 or more for a re­turn fer­ry tick­et to To­ba­go and the air­bridge round trip price for all will al­so in­crease to $400.

But per­sons re­ceiv­ing so­cial grants will al­so re­ceive a tem­po­rary $1,000 al­lowance to deal with the im­pact of fu­el price hikes - and peo­ple earn­ing $7,500 or less won’t have to pay in­come tax ahead.

These are among items in the 2023 Bud­get de­liv­ered yes­ter­day by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in a four-hour ad­dress in the Par­lia­ment.

Im­bert’s Bud­get theme was Tenac­i­ty and Sta­bil­i­ty in the Face of Glob­al Fi­nan­cial Chal­lenges.”

“De­spite the enor­mous dif­fi­cul­ties and chal­lenges that we face, I am con­fi­dent that the re­silience and sup­port of our cit­i­zens, com­bined with the wide range of poli­cies, projects and pro­grammes which we have put in place, will sus­tain the mo­men­tum of the eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery,” Im­bert said.

“Hav­ing faced and over­come the many fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges of the last sev­en years, we will make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in the lives of our cit­i­zens and leave no one be­hind.”

Im­bert de­liv­ered a $57.68 bil­lion Bud­get - $4B more than the 2022 Bud­get.

It was based on oil price and gas prices of US$92.50 per bar­rel and US$6 per MMB­TU. The pro­ject­ed deficit for 2023 is $1.51B.

Ed­u­ca­tion, Health and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­ceived the top three high­est al­lo­ca­tions - $7.453B, $6.852B and $5.798B re­spec­tive­ly.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly re­ceived $2.521B – a lit­tle more than the $2.357B which the then-PNM-con­trolled THA re­ceived for the 2022 Bud­get.

But THA’s 2023 al­lo­ca­tion was less than the $3.97B which THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had re­quest­ed.

Im­bert, who said the last sev­en years had “been par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing for us, fi­nan­cial­ly, as a coun­try,” gave a guard­ed­ly op­ti­mistic out­look.

He not­ed that while the pre­lim­i­nary sec­ond quar­ter da­ta is very en­cour­ag­ing, some an­a­lysts now ex­pect “mild re­ces­sions” to oc­cur in the US and Eu­rope lat­er in 2022 and in­to ear­ly 2023.

“Con­se­quent­ly, we in T&T need to con­tin­ue to be care­ful, since a glob­al re­ces­sion will lead to low­er oil and gas prices, which means re­duced rev­enue for T&T.”

Ex­plain­ing the fu­el price hikes, Im­bert not­ed Gov­ern­ment’s pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed view that it is un­pro­duc­tive to spend more than $2 bil­lion per year sub­si­dis­ing fu­el and this mon­ey could be bet­ter spent else­where from so­cial grants to cre­at­ing jobs.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, with oil prices still in the US$90 range, we are of the firm view that an­oth­er in­crease in fu­el prices is re­gret­tably re­quired. We have there­fore de­cid­ed to in­crease, as of to­day ((yes­ter­day), the prices of pre­mi­um and su­per gaso­line, and kerosene by $1 per litre and diesel by 50 cents a litre.
The new prices are Pre­mi­um gaso­line ($7.75), Su­per gaso­line( $6.97), diesel ($4.41) and Kerosene ($4.50). The cost of LPG re­mains fixed at $21 for a 20-pound cylin­der of cook­ing gas.”

Im­bert added, “This low­er lev­el of in­crease in the price of diesel com­pared to the oth­er mo­tor fu­els is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to re­duce the im­pact of an in­crease in price of this very im­por­tant fu­el, which would have wider ef­fect, es­pe­cial­ly on the most dis­ad­van­taged groups.”

To al­le­vi­ate the ef­fect of the in­creas­es on the most vul­ner­a­ble, he added, “We shall, in 2023, give all re­cip­i­ents of so­cial grants - pub­lic as­sis­tance, dis­abil­i­ty, food sup­port and se­nior cit­i­zens pen­sion, a one-time trans­port grant of $1,000.

“This trans­port grant fa­cil­i­ty is tem­po­rary and shall re­main in place on­ly in so far as the price of oil re­mains at el­e­vat­ed lev­els.”

Im­bert, who not­ed that se­nior cit­i­zens over 60 didn’t pay for fer­ry trav­el be­fore, an­nounced a $25 one-way tick­et cost. Stan­dard Class tick­ets will al­so rise to $75 (one way and Pre­mi­um to $150 (one way).

The air­bridge fare was al­so in­creased from $150 one way to $200 - mak­ing a re­turn tick­et cost to To­ba­go $400.

Tax amnesty, GATE ex­pan­sion, 100 per cent in­crease in FULS fees

Im­bert al­so main­tained Gov­ern­ment’s four per cent po­si­tion on pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with one ad­di­tion.

He said the Bud­get in­cludes $210 mil­lion for ex gra­tia pay­ments to over 20,000 health work­ers.

Apart from the ex­pan­sion of the tax ex­emp­tion lim­it from $84,000 to $90,000 - al­low­ing tax ex­emp­tion for those earn­ing $7,500 and less - there will al­so be a tax amnesty from No­vem­ber 14, 2022 to Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023.

The Gov­ern­ment As­sist­ed Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (GATE) pro­gramme will be re­laxed to as­sist stu­dents who need to work and study at the same time or can’t af­ford to study full time.

Tu­ition will be pro­vid­ed for those stu­dents who have al­ready ac­cessed GATE at the diplo­ma, as­so­ciate de­gree, or low­er TVET lev­el, to pur­sue bac­calau­re­ate lev­el de­gree pro­grammes.

From Jan­u­ary 1, there will al­so be a 100 per cent in­crease in fees for Firearms Users Li­cences, ex­cept as­sault weapons, which will now have sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er li­cense fees than oth­er types of firearms.

Own­er­ship of as­sault weapons and as­so­ci­at­ed am­mu­ni­tion by pri­vate cit­i­zens will al­so be re­strict­ed. While law is be­ing pre­pared for this, li­cence fees for own­er­ship of as­sault weapons in pri­vate hands will be in­creased to $5,000 per year, while the an­nu­al li­cense fee for own­er­ship of an as­sault weapon fir­ing range use will be in­creased to $1,000.

$100,00 fine for scrap iron steal­ing, trad­ing

Oth­er mea­sures from Jan­u­ary 1 in­clude:

• Fines for sell­ing/steal­ing/trad­ing/re­ceiv­ing scrap iron in­creased from $15,000 $100,000.

• Heav­ier penal­ties for il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, in­clud­ing levy/seiz­ing equip­ment found at quar­ries.

• Penal­ties for il­le­gal state tim­ber­ing in­creased to $100,000.

• Oil pol­lu­tion fines in­creased from $10,000 to $100,000.

• An Ap­pren­tice­ship Al­lowance to en­cour­age busi­ness­es to hire per­sons aged 16 to 25 for via al­lowance of 150 per cent for all re­mu­ner­a­tion paid.

• Three-tiered sub­sidy for Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme.

• Prop­er re­sources for TTPS fund­ing equip­ment and sup­port.

• In­creased agri­cul­tur­al grant in­crease from 50 per cent to 75 per cent, plus in­creased fund­ing from $250,000 to $340,000 for all pro­duc­ers of al­ter­na­tives to wheat flour.

• Con­ces­sions for small/medi­um busi­ness­es in­clude a new 500m long-term loan guar­an­tee for up to 80 per cent for val­ue of loans up to 10 years, in­clud­ing with fo­cus on non-en­er­gy sec­tors.

• Re­new­able en­er­gy re­bate for agri­cul­ture.

• Sup­ple­men­tal Pe­tro­le­um Tax ad­just­ment mo­ti­vat­ing com­pa­nies to pro­duce more.

• Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan in­creased by $2B to $6.2B.

Al­so in 2023 ...

• $200m for Sec­ondary Road Re­pair Com­pa­ny

• Re­bates for low-in­come groups af­ter util­i­ty rate hikes fi­nalised

• Prop­er­ty tax Tri­bunal Board se­lect­ed and chair­man to be ap­point­ed.

• T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al sourced by year-end.

• Gov­ern­ment guar­an­teed loans to­talling $1.5B for HDC to han­dle stalled projects, pay debts and re­fo­cus on hous­ing unit con­struc­tion. New HDC sub­sidiary com­pa­nies for con­struc­tion, prop­er­ty man­age­ment and unit sales.

• In­creased fees for Com­mis­sion­ers of Af­fi­davits

• Land for for­mer Petrotrin em­ploy­ees at eight sites.

• Com­mon­wealth Youth Games.

• Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion Cen­sus

• Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute bill will need Op­po­si­tion sup­port for pas­sage

• Gam­bling Con­trol com­mis­sion be­gins rev­enue col­lec­tion

• Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate leas­es to be is­sued in ear­ly 2023 for 78 lots and five fac­tor shells - gen­er­at­ing 4,500 jobs

• Help to digi­tise tourism sys­tems; three new ho­tels to­talling 600 rooms; Roy­al Caribbean mak­ing in­creased calls.

• New Health Min­istry HQ com­plet­ed in 2023 will save $12m an­nu­al rent

• Far-reach­ing pos­i­tive con­se­quences from sev­en new BPTT wells to be drilled by 2025.

BudgetBudget Lead


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