Gail Alexan­der

Yes­ter­day's two-part Cab­i­net meet­ing con­cerned bud­get plan­ning to­wards a pro­ject­ed Sep­tem­ber bud­get de­liv­ery, a Gov­ern­ment spokesman said. Yes­ter­day's spe­cial meet­ings at the Prime Min­is­ter's Phillip­ine home cli­maxed sev­er­al oth­er Gov­ern­ment meet­ings on Tues­day con­cern­ing the state of the econ­o­my and fi­nances. The round of meet­ings on Tues­day in­volved pre­sen­ta­tion by tech­ni­cal ex­perts, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said.An­oth­er meet­ing in­volved the Cab­i­net's En­er­gy Com­mit­tee. They said this was all meant to in­form min­is­ters what plat­form they had to build on "go­ing for­ward," in­clud­ing plan­ning of the 2012 bud­get.

Min­istries start­ed prepar­ing bud­get al­lo­ca­tion re­quests since late May, the Fi­nance Di­vi­sion con­firmed Thurs­day. The Gov­ern­ment is aim­ing to present the bud­get in Sep­tem­ber, ahead of the start of the new fi­nan­cial year in Oc­to­ber. Up to yes­ter­day, it was un­cer­tain if the ad­min­is­tra­tion will stick to the ear­ly Sep­tem­ber date on which the 2011 bud­get was pre­sent­ed. The 2011 bud­get of $49 bil­lion was ex­tend­ed by $3.5 bil­lion in May when the Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed a sup­ple­men­ta­tion bill in Par­lia­ment. Dur­ing that de­bate, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said T&T's eco­nom­ic po­si­tion had im­proved and the coun­try had start­ed "see­ing blue sky" and could pos­si­bly look to­wards a big­ger bud­get of over $50 bil­lion in fu­ture.