Rapheal John-Lall

For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira says this is the best time to be­gin lift­ing the fu­el sub­sidy as T&T looks to­wards the mid-year bud­get re­view on April 8.

"The Prime Min­is­ter may be deal­ing with that is­sue. This is the right time to do it," she told the T&T Guardian.

"The sub­sidy may not be to­tal­ly re­moved but it is im­por­tant to at least be­gin do­ing it."

Nunez-Tesheira said Prime Min­ster Dr Kei­th Row­ley is new in of­fice and is still grap­pling with the chal­lenges but one of the things he should be fo­cus­ing on in the mid-year re­view is rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

"I be­lieve that he will al­so be tak­ing the ad­vice of the Eco­nom­ic Ad­vi­so­ry Board to deal with this is­sue," she said.

The for­mer min­is­ter said while oil prices seem to be sta­bil­is­ing af­ter the down­ward trend of the last two years, it is still not where it should be and Gov­ern­ment has to look for more ways to close the fis­cal deficit.

She said: "The Prime Min­is­ter will want to look at the prop­er­ty tax and al­so the ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of the Gate pro­gramme. He would want to cut ex­pen­di­ture but at the same time he does not want to see more un­em­ploy­ment," she said.

Al­so weigh­ing in on the is­sue was Ibrahim Ali, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, who said the cost of liv­ing will in­crease dras­ti­cal­ly if Gov­ern­ment lifts the fu­el sub­sidy.

"If they do that costs will go up, busi­ness might not be able to ab­sorb the costs and busi­ness­es might fold up as they would no longer be com­pet­i­tive. The cost of the stan­dard of liv­ing would go up," he said.

How­ev­er, he added, if there is any time to lift the fu­el sub­sidy that time would be now and wait­ing any longer would make the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion worse.

"Oil prices are low right now, so if they have to do it, the time is now," he said.

Ali said the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion is wait­ing to see how Gov­ern­ment deals with the land and build­ing tax.

"Any­thing that costs more will de­ter peo­ple from pay­ing tax­es," he said.He crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for not in­volv­ing the small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SME) in the re­cent­ly launched tri­par­tite body.

"That body has gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, labour lead­ers but where is the SME sec­tor? The SME sec­tor is the back­bone of our econ­o­my. They em­ploy the mass of work­ers," he said.