Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has an­nounced a $49.5 bil­lion bud­get that will in­crease ex­emp­tions on In­come Tax but al­so see a rise in the cost of im­port­ing mo­tor ve­hi­cles and some­times in fu­el as sub­si­dies on fu­el at pumps are be­ing com­plete­ly re­moved.

Fu­el prices:

Fu­el sup­pli­ers will be al­lowed to set their own prices and the min­is­ter said it will mean that when prices are low, the cost will be low­er but once world prices rise, gas prices will rise as well.

The State will pro­vide the gas to the sup­pli­ers at prices it will an­nounce at the start of each month.

The gov­ern­ment will al­so of­fer for sale to pri­vate own­ers, all gas sta­tions con­trolled by NP.

Less In­come Tax:

Per­son­al In­come Tax al­lowances will rise from $72,000 to $84,000 per an­num. It means that in­di­vid­u­als earn­ing $7,000 or less will be ex­empt from pay­ing any in­come tax.

This mea­sure will be­come ef­fec­tive in Jan­u­ary 2021.

"This will put ad­di­tion­al in­come of $3,500 in the pock­ets of over $250,000 in­di­vid­ual tax­pay­ers," the min­is­ter told the Par­lia­ment in his pre­sen­ta­tion.

This will cost Gov­ern­ment $750 mil­lion in in­come tax rev­enue but Min­is­ter Im­bert said this re­lief will help stim­u­late de­mand in the econ­o­my.

Im­port­ed mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax­es:

The min­is­ter an­nounced the re­moval of tax con­ces­sions on the im­por­ta­tion of pri­vate mo­tor ve­hi­cles, which he said has re­sult­ed in a leak­age of US$400 mil­lion each year.

Im­port­ed pri­vate ve­hi­cles will now at­tract Cus­toms Du­ty, Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) and oth­er tax­es from Oc­to­ber 20, 2020.

New home­own­ers:

The pur­chase of homes will be­come cheap­er for new home­own­ers with the amend­ing of the stamp du­ty thresh­old from $1.5m to $2m. This will save first-time home­own­ers up to $28,000 in stamp du­ty.

It will be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2021.

Cig­a­rette, lux­u­ry goods tax­es:

Tax­es will be im­ple­ment­ed on the use of cig­a­rettes, with du­ties ris­ing by 20 per cent from Oc­to­ber 2020.

The gov­ern­ment will al­so im­ple­ment a 200 per cent rise in all penal­ties for the sale of al­co­hol and to­bac­co to mi­nors from Jan­u­ary 2021.

VAT of 12.5 per cent will be re­stored to lux­u­ry im­port­ed foods, in­clud­ing lob­ster, straw­ber­ry, cham­pagne, ap­ples, grapes and oth­ers. A full list will be pub­lished be­fore it takes ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2021.

Freeze on em­ploy­ment:

The min­is­ter an­nounced a freeze in the fill­ing of va­cant posts with­in the Pub­lic Sec­tor for the pe­ri­od of one year.

Tax­es on dig­i­tal equip­ment:

All tax­es on dig­i­tal equip­ment will be re­moved. This will in­clude mo­bile phones and com­put­ers and tax al­lowances of 150 per cent with a cap of $3 mil­lion will be avail­able to busi­ness­es in­volved in tech­nol­o­gy.

In­ter­net 'Mi­Fi' de­vices - mo­bile hotspots - will be made avail­able to 45,000 stu­dents who don’t have in­ter­net in their homes or sur­round­ing de­vices. This will be­gin in the first quar­ter of cal­en­dar 2021.

A to­tal of $50 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to the ac­qui­si­tion of com­put­ers for needy stu­dents. This will be a joint ef­fort be­tween the min­istries of

Ed­u­ca­tion, Pub­lic Ad­min and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion and So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

Ex­pen­di­ture/rev­enue:

The Bud­get has been pred­i­cat­ed on an es­ti­mat­ed oil price of US$45 per bar­rel and a gas price of US $3 per mmb­tu.

To­tal rev­enue is es­ti­mat­ed to be $41.364 bil­lion and ex­pen­di­ture has been put at $49.573 bil­lion.

That amounts to a fis­cal deficit of $8.209 bil­lion.

The al­lo­ca­tion to To­ba­go is $2.134 bil­lion. That amounts to $1.916 bil­lion for Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture, $200 mil­lion for Cap­i­tal Ex­pen­di­ture and $18 for URP.

Oth­er mea­sures:

Among oth­er mea­sures, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port will

be man­dat­ed to take steps to en­sure the port of Port-of-Spain has a pri­vate sec­tor op­er­a­tor by end fis­cal of 2021.

The Gov­ern­ment will al­lo­cate $500 mil­lion to­ward an agri­cul­ture stim­u­lus pack­age and will guar­an­tee State-pur­chase of lo­cal

con­tent in agri­cul­ture.

The fast fer­ry, the ATP James, will ar­rive be­fore the end of this month and will go in ser­vice be­fore the end of De­cem­ber. It will car­ry 900 pas­sen­gers, 250 ve­hi­cles and ar­rive in less than three hours.

In the en­er­gy sec­tor, di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment is es­ti­mat­ed to be US$2.2B for the up­stream sec­tor for cal­en­dar 2020 and US$2 bil­lion for 2021.

The min­is­ter an­nounced the ex­is­tence of 220.1 mil­lion bar­rels in proved oil re­serves and 99.7 mil­lion bar­rels in prob­a­ble re­serves.

Oil pro­duc­tion is ex­pect­ed to rise from 60,000 bar­rels/day in 2020 to 80,000 by 2022.

Nat­ur­al gas out­put is es­ti­mat­ed to re­main at 3.2bscf in fis­cal 2020 and fis­cal 2021. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter said there is ex­ist­ing ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide 3.5bcf, al­low­ing for the restart of chem­i­cal plants once com­mod­i­ty prices im­prove.

The Gov­ern­ment will give the HDC a $1 bil­lion loan guar­an­tee. Ex­ist­ing home­own­ers will be en­cour­ag­ing to con­vert their arrange­ments to full mort­gages.

Some 20 per cent of all state hous­ing projects will be re­served for small and medi­um con­trac­tors.

Salary re­lief and in­come sup­port grants will be ex­tend­ed to De­cem­ber 2020 for work­ers in cre­ative and cul­tur­al in­dus­try.

The alu­mini­um in­dus­try will be re­vis­it­ed.

Se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en to­ward ex­tend­ing the re­tire­ment age to 65.

The Gam­ing Com­mis­sion will be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure that the gov­ern­ment gets tax rev­enue from casi­nos and the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to bring sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in tax col­lec­tion, re­duc­ing the tax gap by as much as $5 bil­lion per year.

Prop­er­ty Tax will form part of new tax regime in 2021. It will start with res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties and the min­is­ter as­sured it will be "fair and rea­son­able and not oner­ous bur­den". Com­mer­cial and agri­cul­tur­al prop­er­ties will fol­low.

The min­is­ter said the Bud­get deficit for 2020, which was fore­cast­ed to be TT$5.3 bil­lion, will now be TT$16.8 bil­lion.

He said the gov­ern­ment with­drew TT$6 bil­lion from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund. The econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to con­tract by 6.8 per cent in 2020.

How­ev­er, he said in­fla­tion is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue at be­tween 1-2 per cent up to 2022.

At the end of Sep­tem­ber 2020, the coun­try had US$7.3 bil­lion in for­eign re­serves and US$5.7 bil­lion in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

The theme of the bud­get was 'Re­set­ting the econ­o­my for growth and in­no­va­tion'.