Gail Alexan­der

The 2013-2014 bud­get be­ing de­liv­ered by the Gov­ern­ment this af­ter­noon is ex­pect­ed to be just over $60 bil­lion, an in­crease over the 2012-2013 pack­age of $58.4 bil­lion, sources said yes­ter­day.Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, who was in meet­ings up to yes­ter­day fi­nal­is­ing the con­tent, will de­liv­er what he re­cent­ly de­scribed as the "biggest bud­get" at 1.30 pm at the Par­lia­ment cham­ber.Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) cab­i­net mem­bers would meet in cau­cus at noon to be ap­prised of the bud­get's con­tents, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ger­ald Hadeed said yes­ter­day."What­ev­er the con­tents, it'll be good for our coun­try," he added.The over­rid­ing theme in the pack­age is ex­pect­ed to be growth and in­vest­ment as well fast-track­ing de­liv­ery of a num­ber of is­sues and projects promised in the last bud­get and are yet to be im­ple­ment­ed.

In­creased fund­ing is ex­pect­ed to fa­cil­i­tate this, but would bring the 2014 pack­age up to about $60 bil­lion–so far T&T's biggest, sources con­firmed.Howai's sec­ond bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to­day would al­so be yet an­oth­er deficit bud­get due to out­stand­ing pay­ments Gov­ern­ment owes, he has con­firmed. The deficit in the 2012-2013 pack­age was $7.669 bil­lion.PP of­fi­cials said Howai would be at­tempt­ing to keep to his promise–to reach his tar­get of bal­anced bud­gets by 2016–by try­ing to bring the deficit down.Some of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day it had been a tough ex­er­cise to bal­ance "what needs to be done"–es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the elec­toral cli­mate–in con­junc­tion with rev­enue earn­ing mea­sures.They said the bud­get's sup­ple­men­tary doc­u­ments and re­ports would paint the re­al pic­ture of the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion. They ruled out any old age pen­sion in­creas­es.The Gov­ern­ment would al­so be seek­ing to fur­ther in­crease its in­take from the casi­no sec­tor, of­fi­cials said, a move be­gan in the last cou­ple years and in­clud­ing leg­isla­tive mea­sures, some of which the sec­tor it­self had sug­gest­ed.

There is some con­cern on what for­mu­la would be used to im­ple­ment the prop­er­ty tax which is be­ing re­turned in the form of the Land and Build­ing Tax­es. Howai said the tax would be im­ple­ment­ed with "ap­pro­pri­ate con­sul­ta­tion in terms of the rate."The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's bid in 2009 to in­crease the then prop­er­ty tax, be­came the sub­ject of the COP's "Axe the Tax" elec­tion cam­paign. When the PP as­sumed of­fice, a mora­to­ri­um was placed on the tax, de­priv­ing cor­po­ra­tions of that rev­enue stream.For­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Ewart Williams last week said the Gov­ern­ment should say how rev­enue was for­gone with that mea­sure (among oth­er things.)Howai has al­ready eased mo­torists' fears by as­sur­ing the fu­el price will re­main the same. In last year's bud­get, Howai had said the Gov­ern­ment would start mak­ing moves on the gas sub­sidy in the course of that fi­nan­cial year.But this has been de­ferred for an­oth­er two years, Howai has pro­ject­ed, while the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ments CNG con­ver­sion pro­grammes.If the Gov­ern­ment sticks to that time frame, it will take the PP in­to a gen­er­al elec­tion year–2015.

In bud­get plan­ning over re­cent weeks, a num­ber of min­is­ters had ar­gued against mov­ing on the fu­el sub­sidy at this time, it was con­firmed.Sec­tors tipped for the biggest share of the bud­get pie once again in­clude na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, health, ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial de­vel­op­ment.New Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said while he was un­aware of what fund­ing the min­istry would re­ceive, ma­jor an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives planned by the Min­istry un­der the past min­is­ter would still be pur­sued as well as rec­om­men­da­tions he (Grif­fith) made to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. These in­clud­ed op­er­a­tional­is­ing the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre re­plac­ing Sautt.Grif­fith said a cer­tain amount of time had al­ready been spent by oth­er min­istries–and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty un­der ex-min­is­ter John Sandy–pur­su­ing an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives via so­cial pro­grammes, and while this would con­tin­ue with those min­istries, his min­istry's fo­cus at mid-term is on-the-ground ac­tion in­volv­ing law en­force­ment and de­ter­rents.In an­oth­er area, the Health Min­istry had sought a 2014 al­lo­ca­tion sim­i­lar to what it re­ceived in 2013, the min­istry con­firmed. The 2013 al­lo­ca­tion was $5.1 bil­lion, min­istry of­fi­cials said.