An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

As Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert gets ready to present his 10th bud­get, it is ap­pro­pri­ate to look back at the promis­es that have been de­liv­ered and what has not.

The 2016 Bud­get, which was de­liv­ered on Oc­to­ber 5, 2015, less than a month af­ter the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) was re­turned to of­fice, start­ed at $63 bil­lion, in­clud­ing the $5 bil­lion in back pay owed to pub­lic ser­vants.

Dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Im­bert said con­sis­tent with PNM’s 2015 Elec­tion Man­i­festo promise, “I pro­pose to in­crease the cap on joint in­comes re­ceived by re­tirees in re­spect of Na­tion­al In­sur­ance and Old Age pen­sions. The new cap will now be $5,000, or an ad­di­tion­al $500.00 per month, which will cost $160.0 mil­lion and will put more mon­ey in the pock­ets of 88,000 se­nior cit­i­zens.”

This mea­sure did take ef­fect on De­cem­ber 1, 2015.

An­oth­er 2015 Elec­tion Man­i­festo promise that was ex­e­cut­ed was the cre­ation of a Re­tirees’ Ben­e­fits Pro­gramme that will pro­vide free dri­ver’s per­mits and pass­ports for re­tirees over the age of 60. This mea­sure took ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2016.

Oth­er promis­es de­liv­ered as fol­lows:

* Lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form em­barked up­on (Pol­i­cy Doc­u­ment);

* Suc­cess­ful­ly brought the over­draft fa­cil­i­ty from neg­a­tive $9 bil­lion to ze­ro;

* GATE re­viewed to en­sure sav­ings and ef­fi­cien­cy;

* Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil es­tab­lished paving the way for greater con­sul­ta­tion.

* Cut out wastage in the de­liv­ery of food cards.

In fis­cal 2018, some of the promis­es de­liv­ered to date are:

i) Re­stric­tions on maxi-taxi li­cens­es re­moved, to al­low for a freer pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem;

ii) Grants of up to $100,000 ($20M al­lo­cat­ed by gov’t) for farm­ers un­der a new Agri­cul­tur­al Fi­nan­cial Sup­port Pro­gramme; ap­pli­cants must be prop­er­ly cer­ti­fied/qual­i­fied;

iii) A roy­al­ty rate of 12.5 per cent is now ap­plic­a­ble across the board on ex­trac­tion of all gas, con­den­sate and oil;

iv) Tax of 10 per cent on all cash win­nings of NL­CB; and

v) Com­mer­cial banks to have a new tax brack­et of 35 per cent from Jan­u­ary 1, 2018.

In fis­cal 2019, among the promis­es de­liv­ered from the $51.776 bil­lion bud­get were:

a) Pub­lic ser­vice pen­sion in­creased to a min­i­mum of $3,500 per month for pub­lic ser­vants on re­tire­ment. A cap will be placed on se­nior cit­i­zen pen­sions be­ing raised to $6,000, al­low­ing those in re­ceipt of both NIS and Se­nior Cit­i­zen Grant to re­ceive up to $3,000 from both;

b) The age el­i­gi­bil­i­ty on dis­abil­i­ty grants was re­moved to ac­com­mo­date chil­dren un­der 18. The grants in­creased from $800 to $1,500 and for those over 18, in­creased from $1,800 to $2,000. The pub­lic as­sis­tance grant was in­creased by $150;

c) Food card val­ue in­creased by $100 ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2019.

In 2020 the to­tal ex­pen­di­ture of $53.036 bil­lion the in­cen­tives that were de­liv­ered:

* Re­moval of all tax­es and du­ties on LED bulbs for five years;

* On-the-job-train­ing in­crease stipends by 10 per cent and in­crease in­take for the pro­gramme to 8000 trainee;

* In­crease of min­i­mum wage from $15 to $17.50 per hour which ben­e­fit­ed 194,000 per­sons;

* $3 bil­lion in in­ter­est-bear­ing gov­ern­ment bonds to reg­is­tered VAT busi­ness­es to meet their VAT ar­rears. Tenure of 5 years and in­ter­est of 1.5 per cent per an­num;

In fis­cal 2021, when the coun­try was in a pe­ri­od of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the min­is­ter was pru­dent in what was promised:

- Over the next few years the HDC will de­liv­er over 25,000 homes on state land and pro­vide a mix of hous­ing so­lu­tions for peo­ple of dif­fer­ent lev­els of in­comes and so­cio-eco­nom­ic stand­ings;

- Any­one earn­ing $7,000 per month or less was ex­empt­ed from in­come tax as the per­son­al tax al­lowance was raised from $72,000 to $84,000.

In fis­cal 2022 Im­bert gave fur­ther in­cen­tives which in­clud­ed:

* Agri­cul­ture: $300 mil­lion stim­u­lus pack­age ex­pect­ed to boost farm­ing in­dus­try;

* TTMF and Home Mort­gage Bank merged

* Tax­a­tion of 12.5 per cent tax on oil, ce­re­al, canned fish, cur­ry, etc.

Look­ing at the fis­cal 2023 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion

i) The VAT reg­is­tra­tion thresh­old was in­creased from $500,000 per year to $600,000 to pro­vide re­lief and sup­port in the pay­ment of VAT, to ben­e­fit the Small and Medi­um En­ter­prise Sec­tor, in par­tic­u­lar.

ii) Per­son­al in­come tax al­lowance – The gov­ern­ment in­creased the ex­emp­tion on the per­son­al in­come tax lim­it from $84,000 to $90,000 per year. This means peo­ple earn­ing a month­ly salary of $7,000 or less will be ex­empt from in­come tax.

And for fis­cal 2024 there was a sweet­en­er for min­i­mum wage work­ers as their monies in­creased from $17.50 to $20.50 per hour.

- $1 bil­lion in back­pay which start­ed in De­cem­ber 2023.

-For needy stu­dents in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools - us­ing a means test - a school sup­plies and book grant of $1000.

Promis­es de­layed

— In the 2016 Bud­get, Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment would have tak­en steps to amend cer­tain leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sions to im­ple­ment the ex­ist­ing Prop­er­ty Tax Act 2009, “with a view to hav­ing a fair and eq­ui­table prop­er­ty tax regime in place by Jan­u­ary 1, 2017.” The new prop­er­ty tax was not in place by Jan­u­ary 1, 2017, but it fi­nal­ly ma­te­ri­alised in 2024, when cit­i­zens be­gan pay­ing their tax­es and with Im­bert, on Mon­day ex­tend­ing the dead­line for pay­ment to No­vem­ber 29, 2024 from Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

— Im­bert an­nounced that the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) would be in place by the end of the 2017 fis­cal, which was Sep­tem­ber 30, 2017. The TTRA was on­ly giv­en the green light to be im­ple­ment­ed last week by the Privy Coun­cil, af­ter the rep­re­sent­ing union the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) took the Gov­ern­ment to court to chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the for­ma­tion of the TTRA.

— New pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of which was sup­posed to be in place in 2016, was on­ly ful­ly pro­claimed in April 2023.

Promis­es not de­liv­ered

Over the nine-year pe­ri­od, the Busi­ness Guardian checked some of Im­bert’s promis­es that were not kept:

* The Na­tion­al Sta­tis­ti­cal In­sti­tute, which was meant to re­place the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, has not been de­liv­ered;

* A Gen­er­al Ac­count­ing Of­fice, which was meant to fo­cus spend­ing to achieve max­i­mum ef­fi­cien­cy, has not been de­liv­ered;

* In the 2018 bud­get, Im­bert an­nounced a plan to dereg­u­late the fu­el mar­ket in T&T, while lib­er­al­is­ing fu­el prices so that they would “fluc­tu­ate with the prices of oil and the prices of re­fined prod­ucts.” In the 2019 bud­get, he an­nounced a de­ci­sion “to slow down the com­plete dereg­u­la­tion of fu­el prices in or­der to ease the bur­den on tax­pay­ers.”

* In the 2021 bud­get, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance an­nounced plans to in­tro­duce a pri­vate sec­tor op­er­a­tor for the port-han­dling op­er­a­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain by the end of fis­cal 2021. There has been no se­lec­tion of a new op­er­a­tor;

* Still no fi­nan­cial au­tomo­ny for Ju­di­cia­ry af­ter it was promised eight years ago dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion;

* No ban the im­por­ta­tion of sty­ro­foam in the food in­dus­try and no ter­mi­na­tion the use of plas­tic wa­ter bot­tles in gov­ern­ment of­fices, which was to take ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2020;

* No new op­er­a­tor for the Magde­le­na Grand in To­ba­go. Ho­tel to be re­brand­ed un­der the new op­er­a­tor;

* No park­ing me­ters in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do;

* Ar­eas like Bam­boo and Wood­land are still reel­ing from se­vere flood­ing, caus­ing dam­age to homes and in­fra­struc­ture;

* No im­ple­men­ta­tion of the na­tion­al re­tire­ment age from 60 to 65;

* No im­ple­men­ta­tion of a salary re­view and in­crease for coun­cil­lors, re­mains pend­ing;

* No elim­i­na­tion of ar­rival forms at air­ports;

* There are still some tax­es and du­ties on in­puts for farm­ers when it was an­nounced that there would be re­moval on all tax­es for farm­ers;

* No ap­point­ment of pro­cure­ment of­fi­cers and pro­cure­ment units for re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions;

* The es­tab­lish­ment of full-time ex­ec­u­tive coun­cils re­sem­bling the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and this has not been achieved.