Gail Alexan­der

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has pre­sent­ed a $52.4 bil­lion Bud­get for fis­cal 2022, which promis­es bet­ter food prices with the re­moval of Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) from cer­tain ba­sic food items.

Small and medi­um busi­ness­es have al­so re­ceived a slew of in­cen­tives to re­vive them.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Im­bert said the num­ber of val­u­a­tion forms sub­mit­ted to the Gov­ern­ment by prop­er­ty own­ers is in­suf­fi­cient to start prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tion. The tax, how­ev­er, re­mains as a plan ahead and the Draft Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue es­ti­mates that the Gov­ern­ment will raise $100 mil­lion from it.

The Gov­ern­ment is al­so look­ing for­ward to the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion’s rate tar­iff re­view for 2021-2026 for the Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (TTEC) and Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Im­bert de­tailed plans for 2022 to help var­i­ous sec­tors re­cov­er and re­open af­ter the last 19 months of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He re­capped the pan­dem­ic’s toll on T&T and Gov­ern­ment’s mea­sures to deal with health and eco­nom­ic fall­outs.

Not­ing T&T’s COVID cas­es are now low­er than Ja­maica’s and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic’s, he said Gov­ern­ment doesn’t wish to de­lay the re­sump­tion of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties.

With Delta cas­es and the need to avoid COVID break­through cas­es, Im­bert said vac­ci­na­tion pro­grammes will con­tin­ue in­to 2022.

Not­ing the planned re­open­ing of safe zones next week, he called on the un­vac­ci­nat­ed to get vac­ci­nat­ed as soon as pos­si­ble to al­low all sec­tors to open and al­low the pop­u­la­tion to live with the virus.

“This Bud­get’s theme is ‘Re­silience In The Face of a Glob­al Pan­dem­ic’. We en­vis­age full re­open­ing of the econ­o­my in 2022,” Im­bert added.

The $52.429B Bud­get is larg­er than the 2021 pack­age of $45 bil­lion.

Pro­ject­ed rev­enue for 2022 is $43.33 mil­lion.

Pro­ject­ed deficit is $9.096B or 5.8 per cent of GDP.

The Bud­get is based on an oil price of US$65 per bar­rel and gas price of $3.75 per MMB­tu, high­er than the 2021 ba­sis of US$45 and US$3.79 per MMB­tu.

Yes­ter­day’s oil price was US$75-79 and $5.80 MMB­tu.

Ed­u­ca­tion took top dol­lar - $6.886B.

On “free­ing up” cer­tain food from VAT, Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment was well aware of sig­nif­i­cant food price in­crease but ex­pects prices will sub­side to pre-pan­dem­ic ranges once tran­si­to­ry dis­tur­bances—such as trade and ship­ping is­sues—work their way out.

He said Gov­ern­ment is ex­am­in­ing the list of most com­mon­ly used foods to see where im­port du­ty can be re­moved with­out dam­ag­ing lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Food that will be ze­ro-rat­ed from No­vem­ber 1 in­clude bis­cuits, cook­ing oil, canned veg­eta­bles, corn­flakes, canned fish/meat, cur­ry, juice, sausages, ham, ketchup, bot­tled wa­ter, pig­tail. Lux­u­ry foods like lob­ster clams, straw­ber­ries will still be VAT rat­ed.

Im­bert said no prop­er­ty tax is be­ing col­lect­ed now. Em­pha­sis is on val­u­a­tion of prop­er­ties since the val­u­a­tion rolls must have 50 per cent of prop­er­ties on them be­fore col­lec­tion can start.

Government Ministers from ,left, Marvin Gonzales, Fitzgerald Hinds, Pennelope, Beckles and Terrence Deyalsingh gather after the budget presentation at the Red House, yesterday.

POOL PHOTOGRAPHJER

Im­bert said 127, 969 val­u­a­tion re­turn forms have been sub­mit­ted by own­ers/oc­cu­piers, “And al­though sub­stan­tial, it’s in­suf­fi­cient to start tax col­lec­tion.”

Ini­tial fo­cus was on res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties. Strate­gies to ac­cess prop­er­ties are now re­vised. A no­tice for re­turn forms was is­sued last month with No­vem­ber dead­line.

“We be­lieve that re­sump­tion of the tax is long over­due and we en­vis­age prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tions as a sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue item for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in the years ahead,” he said.

He didn’t say when the tax would start.

Im­bert who said Gov­ern­ment is look­ing for­ward to the RIC’s tar­iff re­view on TTEC al­so not­ed Wasa’s rates haven’t been ad­just­ed since 1993. He said WASA is be­ing repo­si­tioned with new struc­ture and busi­ness mod­el.

Im­bert added, “We will in­tro­duce the mar­ket-based prices for elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter as rec­om­mend­ed by the RIC, We’ll pro­vide low-in­come and vul­ner­a­ble groups with ap­pro­pri­ate re­bates in the first in­stance. We will de­vel­op and put in place a Util­i­ty Cash Card which will be made avail­able to low-in­come and vul­ner­a­ble groups to ac­cess sub­si­dies for elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter, once the prices for these ser­vices are reg­u­lar­ized.’’

A Fu­el Cash Card will al­so be ex­tend­ed to the vul­ner­a­ble to off­set cost of in­creas­es in re­spect of the fu­el us­age up­on lib­er­al­iza­tion of the fu­el mar­ket. But Kerosene and LPG re­main un­der fu­el sub­sidy.

For 2022 Im­bert in­creased the 25 per cent re­bate on TTEC bills - of $300 or low­er - to 35 per cent. The cost of wa­ter will al­so be off­set sim­i­lar­ly.

He de­tailed in­cen­tives to stim­u­late busi­ness par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ting small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es un­able to qual­i­fy for Gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance last year.

Ac­tion on work­ers’, nurs­es’ is­sues, but Car­ni­val un­cer­tain

Among pro­grammes for To­ba­go - which got a Bud­get al­lo­ca­tion of $2.357B plus oth­er sums - is a $50 mil­lion pro­gramme for its ho­tels sec­tors to re­cov­er.

Cus­toms du­ty and VAT will al­so be re­moved on im­por­ta­tion of bat­ter­ies for elec­tric cars with two year age lim­it.

Im­bert has al­so in­struct­ed the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer to be­gin out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with the rel­e­vant trade union rep­re­sen­ta­tives for pub­lic ser­vice work­ers

He’s al­so told the CPO to in­ves­ti­gate re­ports of nurs­es on tem­po­rary con­tracts and the im­pli­ca­tions of this where pen­sion arrange­ments are con­cerned. He asked the CPO to rec­om­mend so­lu­tions to en­sure their con­tracts are reg­u­larised. This is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by end of De­cem­ber.

Ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est have been is­sued for con­sul­tants to deal with long out­stand­ing pen­sions for dai­ly rat­ed work­ers and this will be fi­nalised in 2022.

Im­bert said Car­ni­val 2022 “if it moves for­ward” will present a for­mi­da­ble vis­i­tor ex­pe­ri­ence. He pro­ject­ed all sport­ing events with fans will re­turn in 2022 “But this de­pends on the suc­cess of the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.”

TT is look­ing to host the ICC Men’s Un­der 19 Crick­et World Cup match and is con­sid­er­ing games in Eng­land’s tour of the West In­dies in Feb­ru­ary.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley arrives at the Red House to attend Parliament for the reading of the budget, yesterday. 10/4/21

ABRAHAM DIAZ

2022—Bet­ter out­look

Im­bert said the fi­nan­cial sec­tor re­mained sta­ble de­spite se­vere macro-eco­nom­ic de­cline in the last two years. Af­ter the re­ces­sion, the macro­eco­nom­ics now looks pos­i­tive as oil and gas re­cov­ered sig­nif­i­cant­ly from their ini­tial low lev­els. “The im­pact on the do­mes­tic econ­o­my will be favourable. The de­cline will de­cel­er­ate from 7.4 per cent to 1.4 per cent in 2021 and look for­ward to a strong re­cov­ery in 2022.”

De­tail­ing yields from var­i­ous en­er­gy projects and in­creased pro­jec­tions for nat­ur­al gas Im­bert pro­ject­ed high­er en­er­gy rev­enue from high­er prices and new en­er­gy sec­tor out­puts.

Fi­nance will soon will re­view the full range of cur­rent En­er­gy tax­es, and ex­am­ine li­cens­ing regimes and pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts to en­sure T&T gets its fair share from en­er­gy re­sources.

Im­bert’s three hours and 38 min­utes de­liv­ery was punc­tu­at­ed by Op­po­si­tion crit­i­cism.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar de­liv­ers her re­ply when de­bate con­tin­ues Fri­day.

* Ed­u­ca­tion/Train­ing - $ 6.886B

* Health - $6.395B

* Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty -$ 5.664B

* Works - $3.577B

* Pub­lic Util­i­ties - $2.671B

* Rur­al De­vel­op­ment/Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment - $1.65B

* Agri­cul­ture - $1.249B

* Hous­ing - $610M

* Re­mov­ing VAT/Cus­toms du­ty on spec­i­fied ther­a­py /com­mu­ni­ca­tion equip­ment for hear­ing/vi­su­al­ly im­paired

* Tax al­lowance for first-time home­own­ers

* Re­moval of re­main­ing du­ties on com­put­ers/hard­ware

* Sale of 10m FCB shares

* Law for Unit Trust flex­i­bil­i­ty to “max­i­mize re­turns on its in­vest­ment”

* Li­cens­ing regime for gam­bling sec­tor com­ing soon with first rev­enue in 2021.

* Pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions will be de­bat­ed soon.

* Na­tion­al Dig­i­tal ID and ac­counts for cit­i­zens com­ing.

* Over­weight trucks’ penal­ties rise from $750 to $8,000

* Five per cent tax re­duc­tion for sig­nif­i­cant ex­porters of lo­cal goods

* Loans for busi­ness­es with an­nu­al gross rev­enue be­tween $500,000 and $25m where Gov­ern­ment guar­an­tees the en­tire loan. Re­pay­ment pe­ri­ods in­crease from five to sev­en years.

* Loans for buy­ing com­pa­ny as­sets.

* Re­laxed re­quire­ments for SMEs to be up to date with BIR and NIB records.

* Fi­nance pro­vides train­ing for SMEs to man­age records.

* Fa­cil­i­ties con­tin­ued for busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing with un­der $1m and for mi­cro-busi­ness­es as­sist­ed by cred­it unions.

A Parliamentary police officer salutes national security minister Fitzgerald Hinds on his arrival to the Red House for the budget presentatgion in Parliament, yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

* Five per cent tax re­duc­tion/oth­er con­ces­sions for SMEs with tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions and digi­ti­sa­tion and those in man­u­fac­tur­ing with such projects.

* Re­search and de­vel­op­ment al­lowance for com­pa­nies.

* 30 per cent tax cred­it for com­pa­nies in car­bon cap­ture and en­hanced oil re­cov­ery.

* Full tax hol­i­day for new SMEs on Stock Ex­change.

* Tax con­ces­sion to en­cour­age for­eign com­pa­nies to in­vest lo­cal­ly.

* Tax al­lowance up to $1m for cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship of Her­itage sites from QRC to Re­form mandir.

* Home Mort­gage Bank/HDC merg­er.

* Phoenix Park Es­tate com­plet­ed in 2022 by Bei­jing con­struc­tion. Chi­nese en­ter­pris­es will have plat­form to ex­pand to Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket.

* Steel­bands to be tourism am­bas­sadors.