Elec­tion Bud­get.

Min­inum wage in­creased to $17.50 an hour, CEPEP and URP salaries up by 15 per­cent, jobs for youths, day care cen­tres for tots, shel­ters for home­less women - and a tax-free agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day an­nounced these im­prove­ments with­in a bag of con­ces­sions for var­i­ous oth­er sec­tors in his 2020 Bud­get, wide­ly re­gard­ed as an elec­tion Bud­get.

In­deed, Im­bert closed his Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion list­ing what Gov­ern­ment has done in its term and adding, “We’ve achieved our man­i­festo promis­es.... we’ve clear­ly demon­strat­ed a ca­pac­i­ty and com­pe­tence in man­age­ment of the econ­o­my over the last 48 months ....our ex­em­plary record could now stand the test of pub­lic scruti­ny.”

“We in the PNM will con­tin­ue to ‘Get Up And Stand Up for What is Right’,” he con­clud­ed, quot­ing late reg­gae icon Bob Mar­ley.

The $53.036 bil­lion Bud­get - $2.5B more than last year’s $51.7B Bud­get- will take T&T through the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fifth and fi­nal year in which Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls are due af­ter No­vem­ber 28 and gen­er­al elec­tions, next year.

Im­bert spoke for three hours and 10 min­utes on his Bud­get’s theme which pro­claimed “Sta­bil­i­ty, Strength and Growth.”

The pack­age was - as pro­ject­ed - de­void of any gas price hikes, in­creased tax­es or mea­sures to pun­ish the pub­lic. In­stead the slew of con­ces­sions in­clud­ed an in­crease in the Min­i­mum Wage from $15 to $17.50 per hour. This will ben­e­fit 194,000 peo­ple and be­come ef­fec­tive from De­cem­ber 1.

Wages for CEPEP and Un­em­plopy­ment Re­lief (URP) work­ers will be in­creased from De­cem­ber 1 by 15 per­cent. Fees paid to CEPEP con­trac­tors will al­so be in­creased by 15 per­cent.

Im­bert an­nounced a pen­sion of $3,500 from 2020 for dai­ly paid pub­lic ser­vants with the ap­pro­pri­ate min­i­mum length of ser­vice. This will be a con­trib­u­to­ry plan. Cur­rent­ly, dai­ly paid work­ers on­ly re­ceive a lump sum of mon­ey, but no pen­sion.

The On-The-Job stipend will be in­creased by 10 per­cent . There will al­so be an in­creased in­take of the OJT pro­gramme to 8,000 trainees, ef­fec­tive De­cem­ber 1.

Gov­ern­ment pen­sion­ers born in T&T will no longer have to present Life Cer­tifi­cates. This will be ex­tend­ed to re­cip­i­ents of se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sions lat­er in 2020.

Im­bert al­so an­nounced day­care cen­tres for chil­dren un­der three years. These would be es­tab­lished in com­mu­ni­ties and al­so pro­vide em­ploy­ment for women.

He said, “Cur­rent­ly there are thou­sands of women un­able to seek em­ploy­ment due to the high costs and lack of day care fa­cil­i­ties for low­er in­come, fam­i­lies. The in­tent is to in­tro­duce child care ser­vices for fe­male head­ed house­hold­ers who meet stip­u­lat­ed cri­te­ria.”

He an­nounced shel­ters for home­less fe­males dis­placed by fam­i­ly con­flict, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, crime/oth­er is­sues. Af­ter as­sess­ment, women will be tem­porar­i­ly as­signed to shel­ters for three to 12 months.

Im­bert re­moved all tax­es and du­ties for in­puts to agri­cul­ture, “It’s a tax free in­dus­try.”

He as­sured that the Mos­qui­to Creek el­e­vat­ed road­way will be ready by Au­gust 2020.

Im­bert al­so re­moved the re­quire­ment to fill out ar­rival forms at air­ports from 2020 . This which will re­duce lengthy lines at air­ports. The new sys­tem will re­ly on Ad­vance Pas­sen­ger In­for­ma­tion (API) .

From Jan­u­ary 2020, the val­ue of per­son­al goods that can be im­port­ed with­out in­cur­ring cus­toms du­ties will al­so be in­creased from $3,000 - a lev­el set in 2005 - to $5,000.

The Bud­get was based on the same oil and gas prices Im­bert used in his mid year re­view: US$60 and US$3 per MMB­tu.

To­tal rev­enue is bud­get­ed at $47.7B up from the 2019 fig­ure of $46.5B. The fis­cal deficit for 2020 is ex­pect­ed to in­crease mar­gin­al­ly to $5.2B com­pared with the 2019 deficit of $3.9B.

Trade-off on VAT re­funds

Im­bert’s so­lu­tion to set­tle the $4.5B in VAT re­funds owed to busi­ness­men in­volved of­fer­ing $3B in the first in­stance in in­ter­est- bear­ing Gov­ern­ment bonds to el­i­gi­ble VAT reg­is­tered bsui­ness­es to meet ar­rears.

These wil have a tenor of five years with an in­ter­est rate of 1.5 per­cent per an­num. Bonds will be trade­able and trans­fer­able to be used as col­lat­er­al or for cash. Af­ter that, he said he’d en­sure VAT re­funds are made cur­rent.

A new method­ol­o­gy to re­place the ex­ist­ing ba­sis for tax­a­tion of life in­sur­ance com­pa­nies was al­so an­nounced, “It’ll have min­i­mal im­pact on the tax po­si­tion of in­sur­ance com­pa­nies,”

Im­bert said im­ple­men­ta­tion of the prop­er­ty tax is con­strained by com­ple­tion of Op­po­si­tion cas­es on the mat­ter and Gov­ern­ment hopes that will be re­solved in 2020 for asess­ment of prop­er­ties to be ex­pe­dit­ed. So far 60,000 val­u­a­tion forms have been sub­mit­ted - 15 per­cent of res­i­den­tial house­holds.

He said the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed tax amnesty net­ted an his­toric $2.3B - five times more than pro­ject­ed.

Im­bert added that OW­TU’s ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Petrotrin re­fin­ery is “still an on go­ing process which if suc­cess­ful” will lead to the award to OW­TU’s Pa­tri­ot­ic com­pa­ny of the con­tract for pur­chase of the re­fin­ery.

Po­lice get more, but Govt un­hap­py about crime

Top dol­lar in the Bud­get went to Ed­u­ca­tion ($7.5B), Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ($6.4B), Health, ($6.8B ) Pub­lic Util­ties ($3,47B), Works ($2.9B), Rur­al De­vel­op­ment/Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment ($2.4B), Hous­ing ($1B).

The Po­lice Ser­vice ap­peared to re­ceive more than its 2019 al­lo­ca­tion of ap­prox.$2.1B . The Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture (2020) list­ed an es­ti­mate for the TTPS as $2.6B. The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Im­bert had sparred dur­ing the last fis­cal year on re­leas­es which the CoP had com­plained about .

Yes­ter­day Im­bert said, “We agree that while there’ s been some im­prove­ment in the crime sit­u­a­tion, its lev­el re­mains too high and con­tin­ues to pose threats to pub­lic safe­ty. The crime sit­u­a­tion is cre­at­ing neg­a­tive per­cep­tion about TT at home as well as abroad. It’s cre­at­ing a feel­ing of fear and a de­gree of in­se­cu­ri­ty. Let me em­pha­sise: this Gov­ern­ment isn’t pre­pared to tol­er­ate the con­tin­u­ing of this high lev­el of crime and mur­der,”

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly re­ceived $2.2B - 4.3 per­cent of the Bud­get.

Im­bert as­sured To­bag­o­ni­ans- some of whom protest­ed out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day about the To­ba­go Air­port ter­mi­nal project that - all would be treat­ed fair­ly.