You will, at this time, be giv­ing thought to the pol­i­cy per­spec­tives which should in­form the con­tents of your 2014 bud­get and while the econ­o­my ap­pears to be "steady as it goes."

You will agree, I am sure, that while T&T has been suc­cess­ful in avoid­ing the type of fi­nan­cial vis­sis­si­tudes and in­sta­bil­i­ty which have fea­tured with­in the Eu­ro­zone. For ex­am­ple, there is a need to put in place, mo­men­tar­i­ly, mea­sures which will rep­re­sent fun­da­men­tal de­par­tures from the past, notwith­stand­ing the elec­toral timetable.

This in­volves not on­ly a re­struc­tur­ing of the econ­o­my with the aim of putting it on a growth path gen­er­al­ly, but al­so, in so do­ing, of at­tend­ing to some glar­ing is­sues at the mi­cro lev­el which have been in­hibit­ing the re­silience of the econ­o­my and the long-term so­cial struc­ture of the coun­try.

In this re­gard, I prof­fer the fol­low­ing for your con­sid­er­a­tion:

1. A frontal at­tack should be made on sub­si­dies to those state en­ter­pris­es which, by their very na­ture, should be made to work along com­mer­cial lines. "Feath­erbed­ding" is cer­tain­ly not the way to go. In­deed, the cul­ture that be­ing state-owned au­to­mat­i­cal­ly pro­vides ac­cess to the Trea­sury trough should be de­bunked.

2. In like man­ner, bod­ies like WASA and T&TEC, should be made to pay their way while mak­ing al­lowance for ap­proved so­cial­ly-ori­ent­ed ser­vices :

3. The fu­el sub­sidy, about which you had giv­en a some­what "timid" sig­nal in last year's bud­get, should wit­ness a mean­ing­ful re­duc­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in re­spect of diesel. There are nev­er­the­less ar­eas such as agri­cul­ture where it would be pru­dent to be con­tin­ued in a mon­i­tored form;

4. Com­pa­ny tax­a­tion should be re­vised with con­ces­sion­ary rates be­ing linked to in­creas­ing em­ploy­ment cre­ation and ex­port-led pro­duc­tion;

5. The struc­ture of the per­son­al in­come tax regime should be changed so that it may again be gen­uine­ly pro­gres­sive. In par­tic­u­lar, rates at the high­est lev­el of in­come should be in­creased in or­der to re­move the clear­ly-ob­served rel­a­tive in­equity and the widen­ing gap in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­come;

6. Cus­toms and Ex­cise du­ties should re­flect the move­ment to­wards re­struc­tur­ing the econ­o­my and po­si­tion­ing it for fu­ture growth with­in a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, both lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly;

7. The fi­nan­cial struc­ture is an area with which you would be most qual­i­fied to deal and you will cer­tain­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the need for banks to adopt a less con­ser­v­a­tive ap­proach with a view to putting their large ex­cess cash re­serves to work in ar­eas which fos­ter in­vest­ment and pro­mote so­cial­ly-ori­ent­ed pro­grammes, such as pri­vate hous­ing;

8. Land and build­ing tax­es must be rein­tro­duced, but in a some­what rev­o­lu­tion­ary man­ner, by their be­ing placed en­tire­ly with­in the purview of the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions with a view to en­abling these bod­ies to meet ful­ly their oblig­a­tions in the ar­eas of scav­eng­ing and pub­lic health;

9. With re­spect to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, the no­tion of a "fixed per­cent­age of the na­tion­al bud­get" lacks sci­en­tif­ic ra­tio­nal­i­ty and should be re­ject­ed. In its place, the THA bud­get, in­clud­ing those ac­tiv­i­ties which are iden­ti­fi­able as be­ing ful­ly with­in the am­bit of the THA, should be re­viewed by a spe­cial THA com­mit­tee of the Par­lia­ment, and up­on ap­proval, be in­clud­ed in the na­tion­al bud­get;

10. Oth­er ar­eas wor­thy for con­sid­er­a­tion are:

(a) the mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax regime with a view to en­cour­ag­ing mul­ti­ple-oc­cu­pan­cy and a move­ment to­wards use of state-owned PTSC;

(b) de­fin­i­tive ac­tion to­wards in­creas­ing the age of re­tire­ment in the Pub­lic Ser­vice; and

(c) the in­tro­duc­tion of a con­trib­u­to­ry pen­sions scheme with­in the Pub­lic Ser­vice.

Er­rol OC Cu­pid

Trinci­ty

Tacarigua

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