Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says Gov­ern­ment has got­ten more rev­enue than ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed from oil com­pa­nies.

In 2021 he said tax col­lec­tion from oil rev­enue was $3.1 bil­lion while in 2022 Gov­ern­ment es­ti­mat­ed that fig­ure to be $5.53 bil­lion.

How­ev­er, the lat­ter fig­ure was ac­tu­al­ly dou­bled.

“What we ac­tu­al­ly found when we did our es­ti­mates just be­fore the bud­get in Oc­to­ber 2022 was in­stead of get­ting $5.53 bil­lion in rev­enue from the oil com­pa­nies we got $10.45 bil­lion, al­most twice as much,” Im­bert said.

The min­is­ter made the re­marks while speak­ing at the “Con­ver­sa­tions on En­er­gy and the Econ­o­my” host­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber and held at Hy­att Re­gency on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

“In 2021 tax­a­tion from oil com­pa­nies was $3.1 bil­lion out of to­tal rev­enue col­lec­tion from tax­a­tion of $16.8 bil­lion.

“So oil com­pa­nies con­tributed less than 20 per cent of tax col­lec­tions in 2021.

“In 2022 our pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mates oil com­pa­nies are now con­tribut­ing 10.4 bil­lion out of $20.7 bil­lion; that’s 35 per cent,” Im­bert fur­ther ex­plained.

And state­ment is­sued by the Fi­nance Min­istry yes­ter­day said the Board of In­land Rev­enue has since fi­nalised the ac­tu­al rev­enue fig­ures for fis­cal 2022 and it has been de­ter­mined that the to­tal rev­enue in fis­cal 2022 was $54.21 bil­lion.

This was $2.57 bil­lion more than the re­vised es­ti­mate an­nounced in Sep­tem­ber 2022, and $10.88 bil­lion more than the orig­i­nal rev­enue es­ti­mate of $43.33 bil­lion for fis­cal 2022, made in Oc­to­ber 2021.

It said the min­istry was now in re­ceipt of the fi­nal fig­ures for the ac­tu­al rev­enue col­lec­tions in fis­cal 2022, up to the end of Sep­tem­ber 2022.

“At the time of the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2023 bud­get on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, the rev­enue fig­ures for fis­cal 2022 were based on ac­tu­al fig­ures, from Oc­to­ber 1, 2021 to Au­gust 31, 2022, and es­ti­mat­ed fig­ures for Sep­tem­ber 2022,” the state­ment ex­plained.

It said with to­tal ex­pen­di­ture for fis­cal 2022 now es­ti­mat­ed at $54.54 bil­lion, the fis­cal deficit for 2022 is now es­ti­mat­ed at $329 mil­lion, which is less than 0.2 per cent of GDP, well be­low the in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark for fis­cal deficits of three per cent of GDP.

“In essence, we have achieved an al­most bal­anced na­tion­al bud­get in fis­cal 2022, some­thing that has not oc­curred in T&T since 2008, 14 years ago,” the state­ment added.