Gail Alexan­der

While the first Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship bud­get did not in­clude any in­crease in the min­i­mum wage, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an has said pro­vi­sions for a new min­i­mum wage "will con­tin­ue to be re­viewed."

Oth­er an­nounce­ments in­clud­ed:

tax al­lowance of up to $1,000 a house­hold on mort­gage in­ter­est for first-time home­own­ers;

se­lect­ed state en­ter­pris­es for pub­lic of­fer­ing and search for strate­gic part­ners for some en­ter­pris­es;

launch of the El­der­ly Mo­bile Shut­tle Ser­vice next year;

milk-feed­ing pro­gramme at health cen­tres;

waiv­er of land/build­ing tax­es for 2010;

25 per cent tax cred­it on cost of CNG kits and oth­er con­ces­sions for CNG users;

tax con­ces­sions on so­lar wa­ter-heat­ing equip­ment and wind tur­bine im­ports;

ex­plo­ration of pos­si­bil­i­ty of list­ing the Methanol Hold­ings of Trinidad Ltd on the in­ter­na­tion­al stock ex­change;

im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures to start meet­ing com­mit­ments to con­trac­tors, now to­talling $4 bil­lion;

same for meet­ing com­mit­ments on to­tal out­stand­ing VAT re­funds, amount­ing to $2.8 bil­lion;

busi­ness in­vest­ment in the sug­ar belt, South­west Trinidad, East Port-of-Spain, North Coast and To­ba­go;

con­struc­tion of a San Fer­nan­do/Pt Fortin High­way, a tun­nel conect­ing Mara­cas Val­ley to Mara­cas Bay and con­ver­sion of East Port-of-Spain to a her­itage city, like Old Ha­vana;

re­view of new fi­nan­cial arrange­ment to sup­port WASA;

new air and noise pol­lu­tion rules to be laid in Par­lia­ment short­ly;

ex­plo­ration of ex­pand­ing med­ical cov­er­age to fam­i­ly units on a cost-shar­ing ba­sis as well as death ben­e­fit in the pub­lic ser­vice is­sue;

recog­ni­tion pro­gramme for po­lice­men who go be­yond the call of du­ty and spe­cial crim­i­nal court for firearms, kid­nap­ping and nar­cot­ic of­fences;

re­struc­tur­ing of the OJT pro­gramme to ex­pand pri­vate sec­tor place­ment; re-eval­u­a­tion of Mul­ti Sec­tor Skills Train­ing Pro­gramme and oth­ers;

tax de­duc­tion for com­pa­nies/in­di­vid­u­als do­nat­ing to the Chil­dren's Fund, equal to the do­na­tion amount;

new com­pa­ny, TT Mort­gage Bank, to be formed;

Her­itage and Sta­b­li­sa­tion Fund stand­ing at US $3.3 bil­lion at Au­gust;

sup­port to mar­ket the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try abroad;

con­struc­tion of Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre to be­gin next year;

new Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Li­cenc­ing Au­thor­i­ty to be lo­cat­ed in Ca­roni; and,

Sug­ar Her­itage Vil­lage and mu­se­um for Ca­roni's Sevil­la House.