Government may have no alternative but to increase the cost of fuel once again if global oil prices do not fall.
This point was raised at a joint post-budget news conference hosted by the Couva-Point Lisas Chamber of Commerce (CPLCC) yesterday at the Chamber’s Canden Road headquarters.
Derek Joseph, spokesman for the Federation of Agricultural and Non-Financial Cooperatives, said “Once that price crosses the threshold that the Government would have set, they would have no choice but to increase because it would affect the budget, and living in a real world, God forbid, should the price go up, they would have no choice, it’s a matter of the Government allowing the market to flow on its own or cause things to happen on its own, and their intervention would only falsify things. If the oil price goes up they should subsidise no further.”
Richie Sookhai, the president of the Chaguanas Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CCIC) said the government is on a drive to cap the subsidy at $1 billion.
Robin Narinesingh, the President of the Petroleum Dealers Association, said T&T is not a price maker but a price taker in the fuel arena and does not control the pricing structure of oil on the global market.
Narinesingh said he was pleased with the Minister of Finance’s explanation in the 2022-2023 budget on energy sector taxes.
Narinesingh said “He proceeded to give us the value chain from exploration right down to the price at the gas pump. It was a really well presented analysis of how prices are derived at. However as a citizen of the country we are under some austerity measures and we hope that the Pandemic that we just came out from gave us an opportunity to see who are the most valuable workers in T&T. A lot of us can work from home and it gave us a reset. As a result of that we can conserve the way we drive and have workers at home.”
Mukesh Ramsingh, the president of the CPLCC, said the chamber was looking now to see what would be done to assist SME’s. Ramsingh said “We do welcome that $500,000 million in loans from the government to assist small businesses. We do welcome that tax amnesty, that will go a long way to assist business recovering from the Pandemic.”
“It wasn’t overall a bad budget, but it’s a tough pill to swallow,” Ramsingh said.
Speaking on the budget Sookhai said he was pleased to see rebates for the agriculture sector, the raising of the personal allowance tax ceiling.