by Samp­son Nan­ton, Lead Ed­i­tor, Con­tent

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has an­nounced an­oth­er in­crease in the price of fu­el in a bid to re­duce the sub­sidy paid by the Gov­ern­ment, dur­ing his de­liv­ery of the 2023 Bud­get State­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Mon­day.

The Gov­ern­ment will al­so raise the cost of air­fare and sea trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, with trav­ellers be­ing called up­on to now pay $400 for a re­turn plane tick­et and $150 re­turn on the fer­ries.

An­oth­er main mea­sure is the in­crease in the per­son­al in­come tax al­lowance from $84,000 per an­num to $90,000 per an­num, which means any­one mak­ing $7,500 or less will no longer pay tax­es and those earn­ing above that fig­ure will now pay rough­ly $125 less in tax­es per month.

With re­gard to the fu­el prices, the Min­is­ter told the House that mon­ey spent on the sub­sidy would have amount­ed to $2.2 bil­lion in 2023.

"We are firm in our view that this lev­el of ex­pen­di­ture on fu­el is not pro­duc­tive and that tax­pay­ers' mon­ey could be bet­ter spent else­where," he said as he in­sist­ed that mon­ey spent on fu­el sub­sidy should be capped at $1 bil­lion.

He an­nounced that im­me­di­ate­ly, the prices of Pre­mi­um and Su­per gaso­line will rise by $1 per litre and Diesel will rise by 50 cents.

Pre­mi­um fu­el will now cost $7.75 per litre, Su­per $6.97 per litre, Diesel $4.41 per litre and Kerosene $4.50 per litre.

The Min­is­ter said the de­ci­sion to raise the price of Diesel by on­ly 50 cents was to re­duce the im­pact of wider ef­fects on the most dis­ad­van­taged groups.

He said diesel is con­sumed by 40 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment will still pay around $1.4 bil­lion in sub­si­dies over the next year.

As a re­sult, he said the Gov­ern­ment will give a $1,000 one-time trans­port grant to all re­cip­i­ents of so­cial grants, adding that a to­tal of 175,000 peo­ple will ben­e­fit from this.

The in­crease in per­son­al in­come tax will kick in on Jan­u­ary 1, 2023. A to­tal of 300,000 peo­ple will ben­e­fit from a ze­ro tax rate and this will cost the gov­ern­ment $450 mil­lion per year.

FILE: A Caribbean Airlines ATR lands at the Piarco International Airport. Image courtesy: Caribbean Airlines

Air­bridge, Seabridge more ex­pen­sive

The cost of flights on the air­bridge will in­crease from $150 to $200 one-way, which the Min­is­ter said will ben­e­fit Caribbean Air­lines by an ex­tra $50 mil­lion per an­num.

Re­gard­ing the seabridge, peo­ple aged 60 years and over who trav­el freely, will now pay $25 one-way.

The stan­dard tick­et will be raised from $50 to $75 one-way. Pre­mi­um cab­ins will in­crease from $100 to $150 one-way, all ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2023.

The Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion will be ad­just­ed to al­low ac­cess to those at low­er lev­els - diplo­ma, as­so­ciate de­gree in­clud­ed.

The VAT reg­is­tra­tion thresh­old will in­crease from $500,000 to $600,000 per year from Jan­u­ary 1, 2023.

The Gov­ern­ment will of­fer re­bates up to $25,000 for in­vest­ment in re­new­able en­er­gy.

It will give a one-time man­u­fac­tur­ing tax cred­it to com­pa­nies that make in­vest­ments in new ma­chin­ery, pro­duc­tion lines and equip­ment up to a max­i­mum of $50,000. That will cost $50 mil­lion if 1,000 com­pa­nies utilise this tax cred­it and will be ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2023.

The Gov­ern­ment will in­crease in­vest­ment tax cred­it from 25 per cent to 30 per cent to stim­u­late ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment. The loss will be $20 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

It will de­crease pe­tro­le­um prof­it tax from 35 per cent to 30 per cent for com­pa­nies in deep wa­ter ex­plo­ration.

The Gov­ern­ment will raise the fine for il­le­gal tim­ber­ing from $20,000 to $100,000 from Jan­u­ary 1 and scrap iron fines for steal­ing and oth­er of­fences will in­crease from $15,000 to $100,000.

It will in­crease by 100 per cent, all firearm user li­cence fees with the ex­cep­tion of as­sault weapons which will now have sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er li­cense fees and will re­strict the own­er­ship of as­sault weapons from Jan­u­ary 1, 2023.

A tax amnesty on penal­ties and in­ter­ests in tax­es owed up to De­cem­ber 2021 will be­gin on No­vem­ber 14, 2022 and end on Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023.

In a pre­sen­ta­tion called 'Tenac­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty in the face of glob­al chal­lenges,' the Min­is­ter al­so in­sist­ed that the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer's of­fer of four per cent to Pub­lic Ser­vants was "the best we can do."

He told the House that pay­outs as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­quests be­ing made by the trade unions could amount to $50 bil­lion.

"We are firm in our view that our cur­rent of­fer of four per cent over 2014 to 2019 for the main­stream Pub­lic Ser­vice, al­though it would be a chal­lenge to raise the re­quired funds, is prac­ti­cal and eq­ui­table," he said.

He said that even at this lev­el the Gov­ern­ment will have to dig deep to find the $4.6 bil­lion in back­pay re­quired but he said the Gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly stands ready to ad­dress this mat­ter once agree­ments are reached.

He said if trade unions take the mat­ter to the In­dus­tri­al Court, the Gov­ern­ment will seek to have it ex­pe­dit­ed.

An ambulance leaves the Couva Hospital, yesterday.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Pay­out to Health work­ers

The Min­is­ter said that in Fis­cal 2023, the Gov­ern­ment will al­lo­cate a sum of $210 mil­lion as a spe­cial pay­ment to be dis­trib­uted to health work­ers, in­volv­ing ex-gra­tia pay­ments to over 20,000 health work­ers as he com­mend­ed the Health sec­tor for its ef­forts dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He said that de­spite the chal­lenges the pan­dem­ic pre­sent­ed, over 90,000 pub­lic ser­vants kept their jobs and were paid their salaries on time and that over 50,000 jobs in the wider gov­ern­ment sec­tor were main­tained.

With re­gards to Prop­er­ty Tax, the Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to be­gin col­lec­tions in 2023. He said the le­gal frame­work is al­ready in place but sim­ple amend­ments are to be un­der­tak­en be­fore the end of 2022.

He promised a fur­ther $100 mil­lion to the re­cent­ly cre­at­ed Road Re­pair com­pa­ny which he said would mean it would have a to­tal of $200 mil­lion for the re­pair of sec­ondary roads.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tions have al­so been made to the 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions. He said the Gov­ern­ment has al­so raised $250 mil­lion for the Pro­gramme For Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) Unit and that the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is be­ing giv­en $1 bil­lion in its 2023 de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme for the up­grade of roads.

Agri­cul­ture will be al­lo­cat­ed an ad­di­tion­al sum of $300 mil­lion for agri­cul­ture in­cen­tives, in­fra­struc­ture and pro­grammes in this year's Bud­get.

Gov­ern­ment, he said, will al­lo­cate $500 mil­lion - in part­ner­ship with com­mer­cial banks - for a new long-term loan guar­an­tee scheme for small and medi­um en­ti­ties.

First Cit­i­zens will man­age the pro­gramme in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er com­mer­cial banks and the Gov­ern­ment will guar­an­tee 80 per cent of loans for up to 10 years.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide $1.5 bil­lion to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion in 2023 to re­fo­cus on its man­date to con­struct af­ford­able hous­ing. The sum will come via three loan guar­an­tees and the al­lo­ca­tions will be $500 mil­lion for the restart of stalled projects, $500 mil­lion to set­tle debts owed to con­trac­tors and a fur­ther $500 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of new units.

He said Gov­ern­ment ex­pects to have the full op­er­a­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank in ear­ly 2023, a merg­er be­tween the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Lim­it­ed and the Home Mort­gage Bank.

Farley Augustine at yesterday’s THA Post Executive Council media briefing. Photo courtesy: THA Information Department

To­ba­go gets more than last year

To­ba­go will be giv­en $2.521 bil­lion which rep­re­sents 4.3 per cent of the to­tal Bud­get. This breaks down to $2.194 bil­lion for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, $300 mil­lion for de­vel­op­ment, $18 mil­lion for URP and $9.2 mil­lion CEPEP. It rep­re­sents an in­crease of $185 mil­lion over the last year.

The Min­is­ter said that $125 mil­lion is ac­ces­si­ble through loan fi­nanc­ing fi­nalised ear­li­er this year and a fur­ther US$15 mil­lion in loan fi­nanc­ing has been arranged.

A to­tal of $735.5 mil­lion has been al­lo­cat­ed to var­i­ous min­istries and state agen­cies to un­der­take and ex­e­cute ma­jor pro­grammes in To­ba­go un­der the Sixth Sched­ule of THA Act, which the Min­is­ter said means the over­all al­lo­ca­tion of ex­pen­di­ture in To­ba­go ex­ceeds $3 bil­lion.

With re­gard to the econ­o­my, Min­is­ter Im­bert said T&T has $US6.8 bil­lion in re­serves or over 8 months of im­port cov­er. He said the econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to re­cov­er with re­al GDP growth of 2 per cent.

He added that the fis­cal deficit has been re­duced to $2.43 bil­lion, down from $9.1 bil­lion at the time the last Bud­get was read.

A Bud­get deficit of 1.3 per cent of GDP is ex­pect­ed in 2022.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said US$163 mil­lion was de­posit­ed in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund this year and added that based on the cur­rent bor­row­ing and re­pay­ment sched­ule, Gov­ern­ment ex­pects no sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in debt from De­cem­ber 2021 to 2022.

On en­er­gy, he said the de­cline in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion that be­gan in 2020 has been re­versed and that by the end of 2022, the coun­try should be pro­duc­ing 2.75 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas per day.

He al­so said that the Gov­ern­ment will ad­just the Sup­ple­men­tal Pe­tro­le­um Tax Regime to mo­ti­vate more com­pa­nies to pro­duce more oil.

Central Bank, left, at the Eric Wiliams Fincial Complex, Independence Square, Port-of-Spain.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Fis­cal Fig­ures

The Bud­get was based on an oil price as­sump­tion of US$92.50 and a nat­ur­al gas price of US$6 per MMB­tu.

To­tal rev­enue will amount to $56.175 bil­lion and ex­pen­di­ture will be $57.685 bil­lion.

The deficit will be $1.51 bil­lion.

Rev­enue will be bro­ken down as Oil Rev­enue amount­ing to $25.019 bil­lion, Non-Oil Rev­enue at $30.150 & Cap­i­tal Rev­enue at $1.006 bil­lion.

SEE AL­SO: The big Bud­get 2023 fig­ures and an­nounce­ments