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Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Budget 2022 Highlights

by

1239 days ago
20211004
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley arrives at the Red House to attend Parliament for the reading of the budget.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley arrives at the Red House to attend Parliament for the reading of the budget.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

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.

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.

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..

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.

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.


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