Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed on Fri­day to launch a “broad­side” against the Gov­ern­ment for its “fail­ure” to deal with var­i­ous sec­tors and na­tion­al is­sues in its 2024 Bud­get.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar will do so in her re­ply to the $59.209 bil­lion Bud­get pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert on Mon­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar will speak from 1.30 pm in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. She has the same amount of time as Im­bert utilised for his pre­sen­ta­tion — four hours and eight min­utes.

Im­bert’s ninth Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day was his sec­ond to last for the term. Af­ter next year’s mid-year re­view, his next Bud­get—the last for this term—will be in the fi­nal quar­ter of 2024. This will be about nine months away from the term’s end in 2025, and the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Af­ter to­day’s de­bate, con­tri­bu­tions on the 2024 Bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will con­tin­ue next Mon­day morn­ing, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who had deemed the Bud­get “painful and de­cep­tive,” is ex­pect­ed to cov­er what she de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment’s man­age­ment short­com­ings from se­cu­ri­ty to prop­er­ty tax, the vul­ner­a­ble and im­pov­er­ished and the ero­sion of busi­ness and eco­nom­ic ad­vance­ment un­der PNM poli­cies. Her con­tri­bu­tion will al­so re­flect the views and rec­om­men­da­tions of peo­ple who spoke at the UNC’s re­cent Bud­get con­sul­ta­tions in the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion ar­eas.

Sev­er­al UNC of­fi­cials—in­clud­ing heads of UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions—and sup­port­ers will be present in Par­lia­ment for her de­liv­ery.

In the 2024 Bud­get’s es­ti­mates of rev­enue doc­u­ment, the Gov­ern­ment projects col­lect­ing $150 mil­lion from prop­er­ty tax next year. Im­bert, in pre­sent­ing the Bud­get, had stressed that the tax will be col­lect­ed in 2024. He had giv­en sev­er­al ex­am­ples of the size of the tax for dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties.

The pro­jec­tion of $150m to be col­lect­ed as prop­er­ty tax in 2024 fol­lows a pro­jec­tion the Gov­ern­ment had made in pre­vi­ous bud­get­ing that it would col­lect $50m from the tax in 2023. How­ev­er, the prop­er­ty tax was not im­ple­ment­ed at that time, since the Val­u­a­tion Roll process was in­com­plete. Im­bert said on Mon­day it was now com­plete.

On oth­er rev­enue pro­jec­tions, the 2024 Es­ti­mates doc­u­ment stat­ed that $8.1m will be col­lect­ed from firearms and am­mu­ni­tion li­cences is­sued by the po­lice—but on­ly $2,500 will be es­ti­mat­ed to be col­lect­ed from pep­per spray per­mits.

In 2024, tax­es from liquor and al­co­hol are al­so pro­ject­ed to yield $110m, $300m (mo­tor ve­hi­cles tax and du­ties), $60m (on­line pur­chas­es) and $2.7b (im­port du­ties).