Gail Alexan­der

The 2014-2015 bud­get will be de­liv­ered from 1.30 pm on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 8.The date was an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing the con­clu­sion of the de­bate on Gov­ern­ment's Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ex­plain­ing why the de­bate had tak­en place at this time. She said Gov­ern­ment had promised the re­form and want­ed to clear its agen­da to deal with oth­er mat­ters, among them the bud­get. The PP ad­min­is­tra­tion de­liv­ered its first bud­get in 2010, al­so on Sep­tem­ber 8.

The up­com­ing pack­age will be the last bud­get de­liv­ery for the PP in its five-year term, now about a year away from com­ple­tion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the Low­er House on Mon­day that Par­lia­ment will be dis­solved in June 2015 and gen­er­al elec­tions can be held no lat­er than Sep­tem­ber 2015. She said she would run the Gov­ern­ment ac­cord­ing to law.

The PP ad­min­is­tra­tion's bud­gets have ranged from $49 bil­lion in 2010 to last year's $61 bil­lion pack­age, which was in­creased by $3 bil­lion in a re­cent sup­ple­men­ta­tion bill. The last bud­get's in­come pro­vid­ed a re­duc­tion in deficit.The up­com­ing bud­get will be Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai's third. The first two bud­gets were de­liv­ered by for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an.

Howai told the T&T Guardian re­cent­ly that his frame­work was al­most ready. His most re­cent re­port on the econ­o­my not­ed con­tin­u­ing sta­bil­i­ty and progress in var­i­ous sec­tors.Up to Ju­ly, is­sues be­ing fi­nalised in the 2015 bud­get in­clud­ed whether it would be a deficit pack­age and if it would ex­ceed the $61 bil­lion of 2014.

Fi­nal de­tails worked on

Yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­istry of­fi­cials con­tin­ued meet­ings to tie up fi­nal loose ends, in­clud­ing the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP).Howai said the re­cent claim by Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi that the Gov­ern­ment had spent $400 bil­lion in the last four years was in­cor­rect.

He said: "As­sum­ing that the en­tire bud­get­ed amount is spent this year, in­clud­ing the mid-year ap­pro­pri­a­tion (which is prob­a­bly not go­ing to hap­pen), the to­tal ex­pen­di­ture over the four years to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2014, will be $226 bil­lion–pret­ty far from $400 bil­lion."He added: "Go­ing for­ward, we need to do what we can to pre­serve the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our fis­cal po­si­tion, but we do have some fis­cal room. I don't ex­pect any changes in pri­or­i­ties, which are pover­ty re­duc­tion, ed­u­ca­tion, food pro­duc­tion, crime and health care."

Howai had said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty had sought an in­creased al­lo­ca­tion for equip­ment and had re­ceived some in the mid-year re­view. On the land and build­ing tax, Howai said the sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture to im­ple­ment it is still not in place.

While Gov­ern­ment's pack­age is not ex­pect­ed to be­gin ex­plor­ing the long­stand­ing con­cern about re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy, Gov­ern­ment sources al­so said the pack­age will have to be bal­anced in the con­text of the up­com­ing elec­tion year, as well as re­cent ad­vice from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund to tight­en poli­cies.