Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

The great­est chal­lenge in work­ing on the 2012/2013 na­tion­al bud­get is re­duc­ing the deficit to the low­est pos­si­ble fig­ure, while try­ing to main­tain the num­ber of ser­vices the Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing, Vas­ant Bharath, Min­ster in the Min­istry of Fi­nance said yes­ter­day. He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia at a Trade Fa­cil­i­ta­tion fo­rum host­ed by the T&T Man­u­factuer's As­so­ci­a­tion and T&T Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port of Spain, just hours be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced the 2012/2013 Na­tion­al Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed on Oc­to­ber 1.

Bharath was asked what was the great­est chal­lenge the Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing in try­ing to work out the 2012/2013 fis­cal pack­age. "The great­est chal­lenge is to bring the deficit to the low­est pos­si­ble fig­ure. We in­her­it­ed a deficit of just over $7 bil­lion and we have to en­sure that we con­tin­ue to pro­vide some of the es­sen­tial ser­vices," he said

Some of the ma­jor ex­pen­di­ture that im­pacts heav­i­ly on the state's cof­fers, the min­is­ter said, inl­cud­es gaso­line which is cur­rent­ly be­ing sub­sidised. Al­so sub­sidised are Caribbean Air­lines and ma­jor so­cial pro­grammes. "But we want to keep some of the pro­grammes be­cause there are many peo­ple who do have the same lev­el of job op­por­tu­ni­ties. We need the so­cial pro­grammes as a so­cial net to catch those peo­ple," Bharath said.

He said Gov­ern­ment is un­able to cut away some of these ini­tia­tives im­me­di­ate­ly, but will do so on a phased ba­sis. Bharath could not say whether there would be some ad­just­ments to the var­i­ous sub­si­dies.He said the chal­lenge is to keep the deficit at its low­est pos­si­ble num­ber, while main­tain­ing the num­ber of ser­vices gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly pro­vides.

On the is­sue of whether the prop­er­ty tax would be re-in­tro­duced in the bud­get, Bharath did not know if that would be an­nounced in the bud­get but said the gov­ern­ment plans to keep its cam­paign promise "What I can tell you is that the gov­ern­ment made a com­mit­ment a cou­ple years ago that there would be no new tax­es and we would re­vert to the pre­vi­ous amounts peo­ple paid," he said.

Bharath ad­mit­ted that the Gov­ern­ment is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some chal­lenges with re­gards to in­sti­tut­ing the old poli­cies un­der the Land and Build­ing Tax. He said while the gov­ern­ment clear­ly need­ed rev­enue and fund­ing from any area mat­ters, "we have a com­mit­ment to the pop­u­la­tion and we are plan­ning on stick­ing to it."