Mo­torists be­gan pay­ing high­er prices for Pre­mi­um, Su­per and Diesel fu­el, and kerosene, yes­ter­day.

His ap­peal came dur­ing a post-Bud­get me­dia con­fer­ence at the Red House, Port-of-Spain, mo­ments af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced a hike in fu­el prices.

Ed­u­ca­tion has once again re­ceived the high­est al­lo­ca­tion in the na­tion­al Bud­get, a $7.453 bil­lion al­lot­ment for the 2022/2023 fis­cal year.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s 2023 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is noth­ing but “fluff, lies and re­peat­ed bro­ken promis­es.”

There were harsh re­ac­tions yes­ter­day from peo­ple in San Fer­nan­do to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment dur­ing the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion that fu­el prices would be in­creased with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. Many feared the hike in fu­el will cause a rip­ple ef­fect and lead to price in­creas­es for nu­mer­ous goods and ser­vices.

T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art be­lieves clin­i­cal staff should re­ceive a big­ger chunk of the ex gra­tia pay­ments be­ing made to health­care work­ers in the com­ing fis­cal year.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has re­ceived a slight­ly big­ger piece of the na­tion­al Bud­get than it did last fis­cal year with $5.798 bil­lion, a fig­ure that’s just over last year’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion.

The Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has said that while Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed an op­ti­mistic 2023 Na­tion­al Bud­get, it re­mains re­served about sig­nif­i­cant im­pacts on the econ­o­my.

The San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SJ­BA) has said it is "a bit con­cerned" with the pro­jec­tion of the oil price at $92.50 per bar­rel.

The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce T&T (AM­CHAM T&T) has wel­comed the re­duc­tion in tax rates to stim­u­late up­stream oil and gas pro­duc­tion.

The En­er­gy Cham­bers says they wel­come the mea­sure put in place by the Min­istry of Fi­nance to im­prove the fis­cal en­vi­ron­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor. In a press re­lease is­sued to­day, the Cham­ber thanked the fi­nance min­is­ter for col­lab­o­rat­ing with the En­er­gy Cham­ber to­ward mak­ing these changes. 

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has re­spond­ed to the con­tri­bu­tion of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert’s read­ing of the Na­tion­al Bud­get, “Tenac­i­ty and Sta­bil­i­ty in the face of Glob­al Chal­lenges”, to­day in Par­lia­ment.

Ex­pen­di­ture: $57.685B (Oil Rev­enue - $25.019B, Non-Oil Rev­enue - $30.150 & Cap­i­tal Rev­enue - $1.006B)

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has an­nounced an­oth­er in­crease in the price of fu­el in a bid to re­duce the sub­sidy paid by the Gov­ern­ment, dur­ing his de­liv­ery of the 2023 Bud­get State­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Mon­day.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmi­ki Ar­joon is pre­dict­ing that the price of fu­el will be in­creased, this af­ter­noon.

As the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance pre­pares to de­liv­er the T&T FY2022/2023 bud­get speech lat­er to­day, this week we at Bourse fo­cus on the ex­pen­di­ture side of the bud­get equa­tion. Notwith­stand­ing some re­duc­tions from peak lev­els in re­cent years, To­tal Ex­pen­di­ture by the state has re­mained no­tably “sticky.”