I have heard and read a num­ber of re­views of the bud­get over the past few days. I even par­tic­i­pat­ed in one. How­ev­er, I have to con­fess that I missed per­haps the most stun­ning pas­sage in the speech. I might ex­cuse my­self on the ba­sis that it came at the very end of five me­an­der­ing hours. I should note that it has al­so not got­ten much at­ten­tion from oth­er an­a­lysts and com­men­ta­tors. That is re­mark­able as it refers to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of $13 bil­lion of in­come for the gov­ern­ment that ap­par­ent­ly no­body was aware of apart from Min­is­ter Im­bert.

Of the 21 min­istries that form the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion of T&T, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try is pro­ject­ed to re­ceive the low­est al­lo­ca­tion for the 2025 fis­cal year.

In his 2025 bud­get, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert stat­ed T&T’s tourism in­dus­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a re­mark­able resur­gence, with air­lines tak­ing the lead in this post-pan­dem­ic re­vival.

Sev­er­al econ­o­mists have agreed with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that T&T’s econ­o­my has dif­fi­cult years ahead.

Trinidad and To­ba­go's rate of in­fla­tion, which mea­sures the per­cent­age change in the all-items in­dex, for the pe­ri­od Au­gust 2023 to Au­gust 2024 was 0.4 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO).

The Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad must ac­cept TT dol­lar as pay­ment for goods and ser­vices at the Port-of-Spain ho­tel.

This coun­try's on­go­ing for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion is one that should con­cern the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, says UWI St Au­gus­tine pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics, Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein.

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon yes­ter­day used part of her bud­get con­tri­bu­tion to show how food im­ports dropped be­tween 2015 and 2o23.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, said yes­ter­day, al­though he does not have an over­sight role over the op­er­a­tions of the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, he will in­ves­ti­gate the cur­ren­cy as­pect of the mat­ter in­volv­ing the state-owned ho­tel.

The re­turn of Don­ald Trump as US pres­i­dent fol­low­ing the Amer­i­can elec­tions on No­vem­ber 5 can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact T&T’s nat­ur­al gas ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela.

Plans for re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of these in­dus­tries were un­veiled by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last Mon­day when he stat­ed "...we are pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary sup­port to boost pro­duc­tion in key sub­sec­tors in­clud­ing co­coa, live­stock, fish­eries, rice, cof­fee and co­conuts."

One en­er­gy ex­pert be­lieves that more de­tails on the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion geared to in­crease the amount of US dol­lars paid to the Gov­ern­ment by en­er­gy sec­tor com­pa­nies needs to be pro­vid­ed.