Gail Alexan­der

Pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2019 bud­get—where Petrotrin mat­ters are ex­pect­ed to fig­ure sig­nif­i­cant­ly—is ex­pect­ed soon af­ter the Fourth Ses­sion of the 11th Par­lia­ment opens next week Fri­day.

The last sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the cur­rent Third Ses­sion of the 11th Par­lia­ment is next Wednes­day.

Par­lia­ment con­firmed that the Third Ses­sion ends and pro­rogues next week Thurs­day—Sep­tem­ber 27 at mid­night.

The Fourth Ses­sion—mark­ing Gov­ern­ment’s fourth year out of the five year term—be­gins the day, af­ter at 1.30 pm.

Par­lia­ment con­firmed there will be no cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the Fourth Ses­sion. A cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing in­volves an ad­dress by the Pres­i­dent.

The last cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing was Sep­tem­ber 23, 2015 when the First Ses­sion of the 11th Par­lia­ment was launched and the new Row­ley PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice. Par­lia­ment was ad­dressed by then pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona. He was suc­ceed­ed in Feb­ru­ary by Pres­i­dent Paula- Mae Weekes.

The 2019 bud­get, to be pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, will be top pri­or­i­ty in the start of the Fourth Ses­sion. Im­bert is ex­pect­ed to an­nounce the bud­get de­liv­ery date im­me­di­ate­ly as the Fourth Ses­sion starts.

Gov­ern­ment sources said the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is ex­pect­ed in the first week of Oc­to­ber, with Oc­to­ber 2 tipped as a pos­si­ble date.

Speak­ing at Tues­day’s Tu­na­puna meet­ing held by Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley’s “Red” slate for PNM’s up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tion, Im­bert ex­plained that by law the 2019 bud­get has to be in place be­fore the end of Oc­to­ber.

He said Gov­ern­ment tra­di­tion­al­ly has a month af­ter the Sep­tem­ber end of the fi­nan­cial year to in­tro­duce, de­bate and pass a bud­get for the next fi­nan­cial year.

“So the na­tion­al bud­get (2019) must be com­plet­ed in Par­lia­ment by Oc­to­ber 31”,” Im­bert added.

Im­bert told the au­di­ence, “I’m in the midst of bud­get prepa­ra­tions- if I look a bit tired, it’s be­cause I haven’t been get­ting much sleep,”

“We’ve been work­ing, mak­ing ‘day in­to night’ in the Fi­nance Min­istry. I had some bud­get meet­ings to­day, so I’m a bit tired,”

Im­bert didn’t re­ply to emailed queries yes­ter­day on whether his heavy bud­get prepa­ra­tions had to do with com­plet­ing fi­nan­cial is­sues/sev­er­ance pay­ments aris­ing from Gov­ern­ment’s clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and re­trench­ment of 4,800 work­ers.

How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment sources said a sig­nif­i­cant part of Im­bert’s bud­get 2019 de­liv­ery will in­volve the Petrotrin is­sue—from what Gov­ern­ment’s next fi­nan­cial steps, re­fi­nanc­ing moves and oth­er re­quire­ments will be for the em­bat­tled com­pa­ny, to cost of the work­ers’ sev­er­ance pay­ments and oth­er as­so­ci­at­ed im­me­di­ate and pro­ject­ed costs.

As a re­sult of the re­fin­ery clo­sure and plans to im­port fin­ished prod­uct for sale Im­bert’s bud­get will al­so have to de­tail fu­ture de­ci­sions on the fu­el sub­sidy.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Allyson West re­cent­ly said there will be mea­sures in the bud­gets of 2019 and 2020 to cush­ion the re­fin­ery clo­sure blow for “San Fer­nan­do and en­vi­rons”- ar­eas where work­ers live.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Cher­rie Ann Crichlow- Cock­burn on Tues­day an­nounced the launch of a Na­tion­al So­cial Mit­i­ga­tion Plan for the vul­ner­a­ble in­clud­ing re­trenched /ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers. Costs for this for the next year are al­so ex­pect­ed to be in the 2019 pack­age.

Im­bert’s bud­get, which will de­tail how much of an eco­nom­ic turn­around has re­al­ly been achieved in Gov­ern­ment’s three years, will al­so de­tail progress of plans to start col­lect­ing the prop­er­ty tax. In Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Im­bert said that “bar­ring un­forseen cir­cum­stances” Gov­ern­ment an­tic­i­pat­ed col­lect­ing it in 2019.