Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment’s mid-year re­view will be de­liv­ered on May 13 when Gov­ern­ment will al­so present a fi­nan­cial bill to fa­cil­i­tate pay­ments to sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day an­nounced the date for the per­for­mance re­view which Gov­ern­ment has rou­tine­ly done six months af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion of each an­nu­al bud­get. Up­com­ing re­view will ex­am­ine the per­for­mance of the 2018/2019 bud­get pre­sent­ed last Oc­to­ber.

Im­bert added that re­view day will in­clude the pre­sen­ta­tion of a Sup­ple­men­ta­tion Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill.

He said this was to al­low fund­ing for min­istries to “deal with long-stand­ing pay­ments to sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors.”

He said re­view state­ments will al­so in­clude a date for the launch of Gov­ern­ment’s Hous­ing Bonds.

Im­bert’s re­view will ex­am­ine the per­for­mance for the first six months of the bud­get’s $51 bil­lion ex­pen­di­ture lev­el. In the last bud­get state­ment, he said there has been a “gen­uine eco­nom­ic turn­around.”

Yes­ter­day, Im­bert stuck by this say­ing, “The econ­o­my has turned around and I’m very sat­is­fied that’s so. I’m com­plete­ly sat­is­fied it’s turned around. And the World Bank agrees with me now.”

The Bank, IMF and Fitch had giv­en neg­a­tive state­ments on growth re­cent­ly.

Pub­lic at­ten­tion in his re­view— set against the back­drop of an in­creas­ing elec­tion land­scape— will be on whether his bud­get plan to slow de-reg­u­la­tion of gas prices re­mains in­tact. Al­so, whether 2018/19 rev­enue es­ti­mates ($47.7 bil­lion) in­clud­ing non -oil and fis­cal mea­sure streams are suc­ceed­ing.

Sta­tus of prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tion— pro­ject­ed by Sep­tem­ber— is ex­pect­ed plus sta­tus of Cli­co debt re­pay­ment is­sues.

His re­view is al­so ex­pect­ed to up­date progress on Gov­ern­ment’s six “game chang­ers” now mi­nus the San­dals Re­sort plan and the TT/Venezuela Drag­on Field gas, de­layed by Venezuela’s wors­en­ing po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

The re­view is al­so ex­pect­ed to pro­nounce on pos­si­ble 2019 bud­get pro­gramme re­vi­sion. In Jan­u­ary, Im­bert said this would be done fol­low­ing oil price volatil­i­ty.

He’d re­vised the bud­get oil price ba­sis to the US($55) af­ter ini­tial­ly be­ing pegged on (US)$65.

He said Gov­ern­ment’s 2019 pro­gramme will be re­vised via the deficit rather than cut­ting since he didn’t want to stop eco­nom­ic mo­men­tum.

The re­view is al­so ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er up­dates on Petrotrin’s post-re­struc­tur­ing sta­tus in­clud­ing re­fi­nanc­ing of its US$850mil­lion bond, fu­ture of com­pa­ny as­sets, and de­vel­op­ments with the three sub­sidiaries which re­placed Petrotrin.

The re­struc­tur­ing was pegged as a “game chang­er.” One com­pa­ny, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, has sus­tained a start-up loss and an­oth­er, Paria Fu­el, a prof­it.

Yes­ter­day, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the sec­ond phase of seek­ing a lease/sale part­ner for the Point a Pierre (PAP) re­fin­ery has start­ed and the ini­tial 70 par­ties , which ex­pressed in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery, have nar­rowed to 24.

Young said the first phase by the Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Com­pa­ny— which suc­ceed­ed Petrotrin, in­volved the re­ceipt of the 70 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est. Par­ties signed non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments and were ex­pect­ed to view re­fin­ery as­sets via a da­ta room at PAP.

He said the third phase will nar­row down con­tenders even fur­ther as Gov­ern­ment seeks to find the most se­ri­ous po­ten­tial par­ties on which rec­om­men­da­tions can be made.