Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has an­nounced a $52.4 bil­lion Bud­get for the next fis­cal year.

The fol­low­ing are some of the high­lights col­lat­ed by Guardian Me­dia.

Bud­get Theme: Re­silience in the Face of a Glob­al Pan­dem­ic.

Econ­o­my:
As­sump­tions for oil and gas prices for 2022 are US$65/bar­rel and gas US$3.75 per mmb­tu for Bud­get 2022.

To­tal Rev­enue: $43.333B

To­tal Ex­pen­di­ture $52.429B

Deficit: $9.096B

Min­istries: Ed­u­ca­tion $6.886 bil­lion, Health $6.395 bil­lion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty $5.664 bil­lion, Works & Trans­port $3.577 bil­lion, Pub­lic Util­i­ties $2.671 bil­lion, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment $1.656 bil­lion, Agri­cul­ture $1.249 bil­lion, Hous­ing $610 mil­lion.

Re­al eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty ex­pect­ed to con­tract slight­ly in 2021 as non-en­er­gy is ex­pect­ed to con­tract same rate as en­er­gy sec­tor, 1 per cent.

Ex­pect 2.3 per cent pick-up in non-en­er­gy sec­tor growth in 2022.

13 per cent en­er­gy sec­tor growth ex­pect­ed in 2022.

Plan to re­turn to fis­cal sur­plus in 2023.

Oil prices ex­pect­ed to sta­bilise at ap­prox­i­mate US$66 from 2022 to 2024.

Renaissance Towers from Fort Geroge Road, St. James.

EDISON BOODOOSINGH

Some of the fis­cal mea­sures:

Re­duc­tion of tax rate by 5 per cent for sig­nif­i­cant ex­porters of lo­cal goods. Over 500 ex­porters to ben­e­fit at cost of $45 mil­lion - Jan 1, 2022.

Re­duc­tion of 5 per cent in tax rate for SME com­pa­nies whose core busi­ness is tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions and dig­i­ti­za­tion with that con­tri­bu­tion more than 50 per cent of an­nu­al rev­enues – Jan 1 2022.

Penal­ties over­weight trucks: Fine in­crease to $8,000 - Jan 1, 2022.

Re­duc­tion of 5 per cent for man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor for 2 years on qual­i­fy­ing projects and ac­tiv­i­ties that cre­ate ad­vance­ment and growth in man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and must in­clude dig­i­ti­za­tion and tech­nolo­gies. This ex­cludes en­er­gy com­pa­nies. - Jan 1, 2022.

Re­cruit­ment of 100 re­cent­ly qual­i­fied ac­coun­tants and UWI grads to en­hance rev­enue col­lec­tion. They will grad­u­ate to the TT Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty when it comes on board.

In­crease lim­it from $25,000 to $30,000 on mort­gage in­ter­est paid by 1st time home­own­ers for 5 years with ef­fect of date of ac­qui­si­tion – Jan 1 2022.

All cus­toms du­ties, mo­tor ve­hi­cle and VAT to be re­moved on im­por­ta­tion of bat­tery pow­er elec­tric ve­hi­cles with age lim­it of no more than 2 years – Jan 1 2022.

Re­moval of all VAT and cus­toms du­ty on spec­i­fied ther­a­py equip­ment for hear­ing im­paired, vi­su­al­ly im­paired, phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty etc – Jan 1 2022.

Di­vest­ment of 10,869,565 First Cit­i­zens or­di­nary shares to raise $550 mil­lion.

Util­i­ty re­bates in­crease from 25-35% on bills $300 or low­er – 1 Jan 2022.

Re­moval of all du­ties, tax­es on all re­main­ing com­put­er hard­ware, soft­ware and pe­riph­er­als that still at­tract tax­es – Jan 1, 2022.

List of ba­sic food items to no longer at­tract VAT – in­cludes bis­cuits, cook­ing oil, ketchup, bot­tle wa­ter, pig­tail. Full list to be pub­lished soon. – Nov 1 2021

Eco­nom­ic Growth: Gov­ern­ment es­ti­mates rate of de­cline of econ­o­my to de­cel­er­ate from 7.4% to 1%, based on the en­er­gy econ­o­my.

US Dol­lars: US$16.4 bil­lion at present pro­vides Gov­ern­ment cred­it­wor­thi­ness and can eas­i­ly cov­er ex­ter­nal debt li­a­bil­i­ties.

BPTT's Cassia C platform in T&T.

En­er­gy:

We an­tic­i­pate high­er en­er­gy rev­enue due to high­er prices and more out­put.

Nat­ur­al gas ex­pect­ed to in­crease to 2.77bcf in 2022 and 3.37 bcf in 2023. Oil and con­den­sate pro­duc­tion ex­pect­ed to rise to 64,000 bar­rels per day by end of 2021 and 86,000/day in 2022.

Bid rounds to in­clude 11 deep­wa­ter blocks, 12 land blocks, 25 open wa­ter blocks.

A com­pre­hen­sive re­view of our oil and gas tax­a­tion regime soon to in­clude pe­tro­le­um prof­its tax, sup­ple­men­tal pe­tro­le­um tax and roy­al­ty, rel­e­vance of suite of in­cen­tives, li­cens­ing regimes and pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts to en­sure mo­ti­va­tion for bids and at same time en­sure T&T cit­i­zens get fair share of re­sources.

Tax Amnesty: $1 bil­lion raised in 2021 tax amnesty.

To­ba­go:

Al­lo­ca­tion to be $2.357 bil­lion, to in­clude $2.075 bil­lion for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, $264 mil­lion for cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture and $18 mil­lion for the URP pro­gramme. This rep­re­sents 4.5 per cent of Bud­get.

To­ba­go to be giv­en $50 mil­lion for To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism Sup­port.

$30 mil­lion for farm­land de­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go.

$788 mil­lion to be spent in To­ba­go by Gov­ern­ment agen­cies and statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties

Gam­bling In­dus­try: Es­ti­mate that gam­bling in­dus­try is $16 bil­lion in­dus­try and tax col­lec­tion can be as high as $500 mil­lion per an­num. Ex­pect to gen­er­ate first streams of gam­ing rev­enue in 2022.

Prop­er­ty Tax: We be­lieve that the re­sump­tion of col­lec­tion of tax­es on prop­er­ty is long over­due and we en­vis­age Prop­er­ty Tax col­lec­tion as a sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue item for Lo­cal Govt in the years ahead.

Tracyann Roberts listen to finance minister Colm Imbert deliver his 2021/2022 budget presentation from her Port-of-Spain, home..

KERWIN PIERRE

Hous­ing: In 2022, Govt will re­struc­ture HDC to make dis­tinc­tion be­tween land­lord func­tion and de­vel­op­men­tal func­tion. Merg­er of TTMF and Home Mort­gage Bank for greater turnover of loans for hous­ing. Ex­pect­ed by 1st half of fis­cal 2022.

Fu­el:

Lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of fu­el prices be­ing fi­nalised with due re­gards to im­pact on low­er-in­come sec­tor.

Kerosene and LPG will re­main sub­sidised.

In­ter­net:

Will es­tab­lish for each cit­i­zen and Dig­i­tal ID ac­count. Pi­lot project in 2022 for so­cial ser­vice grants and health ser­vices.

TTWifi to roll­out free in­ter­net at all schools, all health cen­tres, trans­port hubs. Broad­band ser­vices to be de­liv­ered to un­der­served fa­cil­i­ties.

Num­ber of ICT cen­tres in dig­i­tal­ly un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties will be in­creased to 50, up from the cur­rent num­ber of 6.

Busi­ness Sup­port:

100 per cent guar­an­tee for SMEs loans. SMEs will not be re­quired to be up-to-date with BIR and NIS pay­ments to ac­cess loans but must give com­mit­ment to be­come up-to-date to 2019 and 2020 fig­ures when dis­burse­ment is made.

$50 mil­lion for pro­fes­sion­al sup­port to SMEs.

VAT: Ac­cel­er­at­ed VAT re­funds amount­ed to $3.8 bil­lion. Gov­ern­ment in­tends to con­tin­ue is­su­ing more VAT re­funds in next year.

Con­struc­tion:

1st phase of San­gre Grande High­way should be com­plet­ed in 2022

Va­len­cia to To­co Road con­struc­tion to be­gin 2022

Pt Fortin High­way to con­tin­ue

Ve­hic­u­lar and pedes­tri­an bridge in Diego Mar­tin to be com­plet­ed in 2022

Ma­coya In­ter­change to be­gin con­struc­tion in 2022

Farmer, Ramchan Ramnarine shows the destruction of his watermelon field at Polai Lagoon, Goodman Trace, Penal.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Agri­cul­ture:

$300 mil­lion to agri­cul­tur­al stim­u­lus pack­age fund in 2022.

An ac­cess road re­pair pro­gramme to cov­er 80 kilo­me­tres, and ben­e­fit over 400 farm­ers at cost of $75 mil­lion.

Rice par­boil­ing plant in Cou­va will be­gin con­struc­tion in 2022 among oth­er in­vest­ments.

Tourism:

Some steel bands to be brand­ed Tourism Am­bas­sadors.

KLM Air­lines to be­gin ser­vice be­fore the end of the year.

Sev­er­al ho­tels to com­plete con­struc­tion in 2022.

750 to be em­ployed in con­struc­tion of Mar­riott Ho­tel in To­ba­go and 250 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees when com­plet­ed in 2025.

Sport:

Ex­pect­ing that all sport­ing events with fans at­tend­ing will be per­mit­ted again in 2022, de­pend­ing on suc­cess of vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme.

Con­sid­er­ing host­ing some games of Eng­land's tour of WI in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

Labour: Mov­ing to set­tle out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions in Pub­lic Ser­vice. In­struct­ed CPO to com­mence out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions in 2022. Al­so reg­u­larise em­ploy­ment arrange­ments for nurs­es on con­tract arrange­ments.

COVID-19:

US$18.1 or TT$123.1 mil­lion of gen­er­al rev­enues on vac­cines so far.

Over $5 bil­lion al­ready al­lo­cat­ed for COVID re­lief.

51,493 grants giv­en as food and in­come sup­port to peo­ple who had lost jobs at val­ue of $221.4 mil­lion.

A fur­ther pro­vi­sion of $200 mil­lion for COVID-19 re­lief made in this 2022 Bud­get.

Sus­tained vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme to con­tin­ue in­to 2022 to meet WHO's tar­get of 70 per cent as soon as pos­si­ble.

This list was com­piled by Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed.