While the Min­istry of Fi­nance has large­ly al­lo­cat­ed ex­pen­di­ture in an­tic­i­pa­tion of in­creased salaries or po­ten­tial salary in­creas­es, the 2025 Bud­get will fea­ture an­oth­er re­duc­tion for fund­ing in the food card pro­gramme.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, said while the Gov­ern­ment has made “a pro­vi­sion­al of­fer” of 5 per cent to pub­lic ser­vants in the 2025 bud­get, the al­lo­ca­tions in the Min­istry were not fixed to that fig­ure.

“The ne­go­ti­a­tions are go­ing to com­mence. We are not dic­ta­tors,” said Min­is­ter Im­bert in re­sponse to a ques­tion from Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh in the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Tues­day.

“We have to weigh the out­come of the ne­go­ti­a­tions be­fore we quan­ti­fy the amount owed, and that will be dealt with in the mid-year bud­get re­view be­cause we are not dic­ta­tors, “ He con­tin­ued, “It’s a col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process, as you very well know, an in­struc­tion or col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, I have au­tho­rised the CPO to com­mence ne­go­ti­a­tions with the unions.”

Ac­cord­ing to the bud­get doc­u­ment Draft Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture 2025, which de­tails re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year on the Min­istry of Fi­nance Web­site, the draft es­ti­mate for the Food Price Sup­port Pro­gramme for 2025 is $130 mil­lion, which was $39 mil­lion less than the ini­tial es­ti­mate of $169 mil­lion from the 2024 fis­cal year es­ti­mate or $20 mil­lion less than the re­vised es­ti­mate of $150m.

In 2023, the ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture for the item, which is man­aged by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment but list­ed un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance, was $147.04 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, de­spite this re­duc­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was adamant that it did not mean few­er peo­ple would re­ceive food cards in the up­com­ing fis­cal year.

Dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee sit­ting on Mon­day, Min­is­ter Im­bert was asked about the re­duc­tion by Op­po­si­tion MP Ravi Rati­ram.

“The food card pro­gramme is man­aged by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, but the al­lo­ca­tion is in our min­istry, and we just send them the mon­ey,” said Im­bert, adding, “We are still look­ing at the Mar­ket Box Ini­tia­tive, which we ex­pect would re­duce the ac­tu­al spend, be­cause what we found is that the mar­ket box pro­gramme has re­sult­ed in tremen­dous sav­ings and ef­fi­cien­cies in pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture in this area.”

Launched on No­vem­ber 30, 2020, in the mid­dle of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the Mar­ket Box Ini­tia­tive, is a dri­ve by the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) to dis­trib­ute agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce to thou­sands of peo­ple.

At launch it was in­tend­ed to de­liv­er 1,300 pack­ages per day to the fam­i­lies of 79,000 stu­dents who had been reg­is­tered un­der the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme.

This al­so was not the first time that the fund­ing to the Food Card Pro­gramme was slashed. Dur­ing Bud­get 2023, the pro­gramme al­so saw an $8 mil­lion de­crease in fund­ing as Im­bert again favoured the mar­ket box pro­gramme.

How­ev­er, pri­or to the bud­get, some com­men­ta­tors had called for an in­crease in food card al­lo­ca­tions giv­en the sig­nif­i­cant rise in food prices. Econ­o­mist Dr. Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon was one such, as he not­ed that on av­er­age food prices would have gone up 30.4 per cent from Ju­ly 2019 to Ju­ly 2024 and as such the food card would not be able to pur­chase the same amount of gro­ceries it would have pre­vi­ous­ly.

The Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture doc­u­ment list­ed the over­all al­lo­ca­tion for salaries and cost of liv­ing al­lowances in the Min­istry of Fi­nance at $226.05 mil­lion for fis­cal 2025, $9.9 mil­lion more than the re­vised es­ti­mate of $216.06 mil­lion for the 2024 fis­cal year. The ini­tial es­ti­mate for this item was $255.20 mil­lion how­ev­er, the re­vised es­ti­mate was clos­er to the 2023 ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture of $217,667,041.

The Min­is­ter reg­u­lar­ly ex­plained this drop in var­i­ous sub-items as he point­ed to the slow bu­rea­crat­ic process at the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion with re­gard to ad­dress­ing staffing is­sues.

When asked about a $9.5 mil­lion drop in the al­lo­ca­tion for salaries for Cus­toms of­fi­cers in the doc­u­ment, Im­bert not­ed, “I can ex­plain in Cus­toms, be­cause Cus­toms is still sub­ject to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in terms of pro­mo­tion and ap­point­ment of staff. We have all sorts of is­sues with re­spect to act­ing al­lowances and in­cre­ments, so that at the be­gin­ning of the year, a pro­vi­sion was made as­sum­ing that a lot of the per­sons who are act­ing po­si­tions would be per­ma­nent­ly ap­point­ed to these po­si­tions. But that did not hap­pen, be­cause, again, as I said, we are sub­ject to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, which is no­to­ri­ous­ly slow in fill­ing va­can­cies, and there­fore we spend $64(mil­lion),500 . We’ve been a lit­tle more prac­ti­cal this year, and we put $67 mil­lion on the as­sump­tion that we will sort out a sig­nif­i­cant amount by the year-end.”

He not­ed that the al­lo­ca­tion would be ad­just­ed if the staffing at Cus­toms is af­fect­ed by the es­tab­lish­ment of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty.

Sev­er­al of­fi­cers have been of­fered a po­si­tion at the TTRA, on the con­di­tion they re­sign from Cus­toms.

“The TTRA is mo­bil­is­ing. It’s re­cruit­ing, it’s flesh­ing out this or­gan­i­sa­tion struc­ture and so on. It’s deal­ing with the per­sons who ap­plied for a trans­fer and so on. There would still be an en­force­ment di­vi­sion of pub­lic ser­vants. So what the min­istry of­fi­cials did is pro­vide for the full year, if around the mid-year, we do not need this full amount, be­cause the TTRA is ful­ly op­er­a­tional, which we ex­pect it will be by the mid-year, then this amount will be ad­just­ed. This will be ad­just­ed,” he said.

There how­ev­er was an in­crease in terms of the al­lo­ca­tion for the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board, which had been trans­ferred in­to the Min­istry.

“The Cen­tral Ten­ders Board and staff have been trans­ferred in­to the min­istry, and there­fore the per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture for the min­istry, for 2025 will be more than it was be­fore. And in ad­di­tion, we have made al­lowance for the pay­ment of ar­rears of act­ing al­lowances and in­cre­ments in 2025 so that’s why it’s more in 2025 this is an­tic­i­pa­tion, yeah, and the 2024 fig­ure was in an­tic­i­pa­tion that CTB would be trans­ferred ear­ly in the fis­cal year. Last year it was trans­ferred a lit­tle late in the fis­cal year.

He how­ev­er re­vealed that the trans­fer al­lowed the gov­ern­ment to save mon­ey as a $12 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion had been set aside for Vol­un­tary Sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages for Cen­tral Ten­ders Board work­ers, how­ev­er, this was not need­ed as a re­sult of the trans­fer.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said the staff had large­ly been as­signed to the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment ow­ing to their ex­pe­ri­ence in that field.