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.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert faces dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions as he presents the bud­get for the fis­cal year 2022/2023 to­mor­row.

Cham­bers of Com­merce in Cen­tral are hop­ing that the Gov­ern­ment will not raise the cost of fu­el and add more tax­es to bur­den the pop­u­la­tion.

Mo­torists will have to pay more for gas at the pump and the cost of liv­ing will con­tin­ue to es­ca­late if the Gov­ern­ment acts on its plan to cap the fu­el sub­sidy at $1 bil­lion.

Two of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ma­jor busi­ness cham­bers are call­ing for a bud­get with a fo­cus on sta­bil­i­ty and im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

Cesspool, grass cut­ting, and drain clean­ing op­er­a­tions at the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC) have ground to a halt fol­low­ing the gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to re­lease fund­ing al­lo­cat­ed in the last Bud­get.

The bud­get de­bate end­ed quick­ly­on Sat­ur­day af­ter the Op­po­si­tion failed to pro­duce a speak­er.

The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC) is call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the dead­line for the tax amnesty.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has con­firmed that 90 per cent of the na­tion's stu­dents are ac­cess­ing ed­u­ca­tion on­line.

The To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) wants Gov­ern­ment to go fur­ther in its plans for stim­u­lus ini­tia­tives for the tourism sec­tor.

Op­po­si­tion Leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP, is ques­tion­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment is sig­nalling its in­ten­tion to close down the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP), with its pro­posed move to sell off and pri­va­tize all of NP’s gas sta­tions.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP says the 2021 Bud­get has gut­ted the po­lice ser­vice, and this will lead to se­vere con­se­quences for law and or­der.