Pe­ter Bal­roop

There will be a $6 bil­lion deficit in the 2010 bud­get, says Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Sen­a­tor Mar­i­ano Browne. In an­nounc­ing a three-year bud­get deficit, Browne said while 2011 would al­so be planned with rev­enue be­ing less than ex­pen­di­ture, by 2012 the Gov­ern­ment ex­pects to turn the cor­ner and once again come to the coun­try with a bud­get with rev­enue be­ing greater than ex­pen­di­ture.

This was in­di­cat­ed by Browne dur­ing a Bal­isi­er House meet­ing with Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) field of­fi­cers and Women's League mem­bers yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. Browne had met the PN­Mites to ex­plain the ra­tio­nale be­hind the 2010 Bud­get and in par­tic­u­lar the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to re­vise prop­er­ty tax. The Gov­ern­ment is hop­ing that the re­vised prop­er­ty tax sys­tem will lead to ten­ants hav­ing to pay less steep month­ly rents.

Browne ex­plained that in some cas­es in San Fer­nan­do, Ari­ma and Ch­agua­nas, burgess­es will have to pay less prop­er­ty tax than re­quired at the mo­ment. He in­sist­ed it was not a mea­sure to raise rev­enue, sim­ply a lev­el­ling of the play­ing field, and that Op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­ans had been spark­ing fears among the pop­u­la­tion that were to­tal­ly un­nec­es­sary.

'Work­shop' on prop­er­ty tax

Browne was asked, should prop­er­ty tax­es drop, how would peo­ple rent­ing hous­es and apart­ments ben­e­fit? In places like Arou­ca house own­ers were de­mand­ing $3,000 a month rent for a one-bed­room apart­ment, Browne was told. Browne said that was the rea­son the Gov­ern­ment is en­gaged in a dri­ve to build hous­es. He ad­mit­ted, though, that de­mand far out­stripped sup­ply and that was why the Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing tax in­cen­tives to de­vel­op­ers in the pri­vate sec­tor to build hous­es.

The end re­sult is that the Gov­ern­ment is hop­ing that rents on the whole will drop, Browne said. And he sug­gest­ed that the Women's League make a for­mal re­quest to the Gov­ern­ment to re­sus­ci­tate the Rent As­sess­ment Board.

'Squat­ting a busi­ness'

Browne said there are five class­es in­to which prop­er­ty will be placed–ex­ec­u­tive, mod­ern, stan­dard, sub-stan­dard and shack. Of­fi­cers from the Min­istry of Fi­nance's Val­u­a­tions Di­vi­sion are al­ready in the field as­sess­ing prop­er­ty, he said. He said there were some peo­ple who made squat­ting a busi­ness, in the sense that they might own a prop­er­ty some­where, but if they have pri­or knowl­edge that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to set up a hous­ing de­vel­op­ment in a cer­tain area they would go there and set up a squat­ter's dwelling.

The idea was the State would have to pay them to re­move them­selves from the plot of land they oc­cu­pied, said Browne. To off­set any such moves by white col­lar crim­i­nals, the Min­is­ter not­ed, the Gov­ern­ment was us­ing satel­lite tech­nol­o­gy, Google Earth, to map the en­tire sur­face of T&T. In that way the State would be able to know on a day-to-day ba­sis what changes were made on any prop­er­ty in any area of the coun­try, the Min­is­ter ex­plained.