Gail Alexan­der

For­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Kevin Ram­nar­ine be­lieves that any re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy in to­day’s Bud­get will bring more hard­ship to the peo­ple of T&T.

He was one of many ex­pec­ta­tions we sought on to­day’s Bud­get in­clud­ing what the theme would be.

The 2020/21 Bud­get’s theme was “Re­set­ting the Econ­o­my For Growth and In­no­va­tion.”

Af­ter the last fis­cal year of con­tin­u­ing pan­dem­ic prob­lems, there have been views that the 2022 pack­age will have to go in a par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion–re­cov­ery.

Min­is­ter Im­bert will read the Bud­get in to­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment which be­gins at 1.30 pm.

Kevin Ramnarine

For­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine:

“I think he’ll try to paint a pic­ture of re­cov­ery in 2022 - but it will be a tepid re­cov­ery. This is the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s eighth Bud­get speech, com­ing at a junc­ture where we’re fac­ing ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic and so­cial cir­cum­stances. I don’t ex­pect any­thing cre­ative by way of trans­for­ma­tive strat­e­gy. I ex­pect that in 2022 debt will in­crease and there will be more HSF draw­down. The Min­is­ter needs to set aside the pol­i­tics in this pre­sen­ta­tion and clear­ly de­fine the re­al­i­ty of where we are in terms of our econ­o­my.”

Ram­nar­ine warned that the re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy would bring more hard­ship.

“I’d like Min­is­ter Im­bert to tell the un­var­nished truth and not say ‘I can see clear­ly now, the rain has gone’, or say the en­er­gy sec­tor is ‘boom­ing’ as he did some years ago which turned out to be quite the op­po­site.”

“The Min­is­ter should state clear­ly what the plan is for su­per and diesel prices as we’ve been hear­ing all sorts of things about this change to the fu­el sub­sidy. Any re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy at this time, with oil prices trend­ing to $80 per bar­rel will re­sult in in­creas­es at the pump. I’m not sure this is the time to do that giv­en the econ­o­my’s con­di­tion due to COVID.”

“I’d like to hear too how Gov­ern­ment plans to tack­le ease of do­ing busi­ness. We’re fail­ing bad­ly in this area while Ja­maica has made it a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty. I ex­pect the Min­is­ter to re­port a bump in rev­enue in 2022 on ac­count of in­creased oil pro­duc­tion thanks to the new BHP Ru­by pro­duc­tion and high­er oil prices.”

“We’ll get an in­crease in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion in 2022 but this shouldn’t mask the fact that in the medi­um term we’re in de­cline and Train 1 and the four plants in Point Lisas that are down will re­main closed. While there’ll be more nat­ur­al gas in 2022 com­pared to 2021 it’ll be in­suf­fi­cient and we won’t get to where we were in 2015. The econ­o­my lost was $TT30 bil­lion in re­al GDP since 2015 main­ly be­cause of en­er­gy sec­tor con­trac­tion. Un­less we di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and be­come more ef­fi­cient we’ll keep con­tract­ing in the medi­um - long term.”

Stanford Callender

To­ba­go PNM chair­man Stan­ford Cal­len­der:

“Af­ter all that we’ve gone through with COVID and the ad­di­tion­al prob­lems it’s caused us if I were the Fi­nance Min­is­ter I would de­liv­er a Bud­get on the theme ‘Road to Re­cov­ery’.’’

Gerald Aboud

Star­lite Group of Com­pa­nies CEO Ger­ald Aboud:

“It’s ob­vi­ous that in 2022 T&T has to start en­ter­ing re­cov­ery af­ter the 2020 gen­e­sis of COVID-19 and 2021 con­tin­u­a­tion of pan­dem­ic is­sues. There­fore re­cov­ery may be the Bud­get’s theme or part of its theme. But the theme should re­al­ly be re­form of the en­tire sys­tem need­ed over three to five years - we can’t re­cov­er from this sit­u­a­tion in one year.’’

“The glob­al econ­o­my, en­er­gy sec­tor and trade changes de­mand a com­plete change for T&T in­clud­ing mind­set. We al­so need to ag­gres­sive­ly pro­mote and mar­ket our coun­try af­ter this pe­ri­od of COVID-en­forced ‘seclu­sion’. Peo­ple are leav­ing T&T in droves. We need to find ways to at­tract in­vest­ment here. Aboud said deep analy­sis of T&T’s prob­lems is need­ed and change over for­mu­las should in­clude tourism, agri­cul­tur­al in­cen­tives, shed­ding sti­fling bu­reau­crat­ic sys­tems and pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ships.”

Rajiv Diptee, President of the Supermarkets Association of T&T (SATT).

Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tions’ Pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee:

“The Bud­get’s theme is like­ly to be ‘Con­sol­i­da­tion, Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion and Re­cov­ery.”

Peter George

Busi­ness­man/Restau­ra­teur Pe­ter George:

“The Bud­get needs to be cre­ative, in­no­v­a­tive, en­cour­ag­ing and en­abling.”

George pro­posed plans which should be part of the Bud­get’s theme, in­clud­ing an in­no­v­a­tive plan for rev­enue that doesn’t fall heav­i­ly on fis­cal mea­sures, the open­ing of T&T to blockchain-based busi­ness­es, mean­ing­ful in­cen­tives/tax hol­i­days for new busi­ness star­tups, tax hol­i­days/fur­ther in­cen­tives such as do­nat­ing of land to stim­u­late lo­cal food pro­duc­tion, pri­vati­sa­tion of state en­ter­pris­es, al­low­ing bor­oughs to raise their own funds, cul­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion, and ze­ro vat /du­ty on elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

“Once we don’t face our re­al­i­ty and con­tin­ue along as a woe­ful­ly in­ef­fi­cient and be­hold­en po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my we will sink fur­ther in­to be­com­ing ir­recov­er­able, ir­re­spec­tive of any ut­ter­ance from gov­ern­ment,” George added.

Greater San Fernando Chamber of Commerce President Kiran Singh.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh:

“We sug­gest the Bud­get’s theme be premised on the very elu­sive di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. For far too long, the en­er­gy sec­tor has been the na­tion­al econ­o­my’s back­bone. A ro­bust di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan’s need­ed ur­gent­ly to boost fi­nan­cial and com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty. How­ev­er, since the pop­u­la­tion is faced with ex­treme fi­nan­cial dis­tress the Cham­ber urges the gov­ern­ment to not use fis­cal sys­tems as tools to in­crease rev­enue. We’re plead­ing for de­lay of the very top­i­cal Prop­er­ty Tax at this time. This ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial bur­den would be very dif­fi­cult for cit­i­zens.”

Singh said the Bud­get’s theme should en­com­pass greater fis­cal and mon­i­to­ry in­cen­tives for the Small/medi­um sec­tor, com­ple­tion of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery sale, im­prove­ments for ease of do­ing busi­ness, VAT re­funds for busi­ness­es, har­ness­ing un­der­utilised agri­cul­tur­al re­sources, de­vel­op­ment of the re­cy­clables sec­tor, de­vel­op­ment of the La Brea Dry Dock fa­cil­i­ty, rec­ti­fy­ing Port ship­ping de­fi­cien­cies and ex­pe­dit­ing Salary Re­lief pay­ments.

Trade Union Fed­er­a­tions:

“A peo­ple-cen­tred Bud­get - with­out new tax­es, prop­er­ty tax and fur­ther pri­vati­sa­tion - but with busi­ness in­cen­tives and a roadmap of how Gov­ern­ment will dis­charge its debts to work­ers.”

Min­is­ter Im­bert will read the Bud­get in to­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment which be­gins at 1.30 pm.