Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning is call­ing for an end to the fu­el sub­sidy on pre­mi­um gaso­line, say­ing if your ve­hi­cle needs pre­mi­um you should be able to af­ford it.

In his con­tri­bu­tion to the Par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the 2023 bud­get in the Low­er House on Fri­day, Man­ning said the fu­el sub­sidy was a re­gres­sive mea­sure that as­sists the wealthy more than it does the poor.

“It is my view Mr Deputy Speak­er that the sub­sidy on pre­mi­um fu­el should be com­plete­ly re­moved. Any­one dri­ving a ve­hi­cle that re­quires pre­mi­um fu­el is dri­ving a lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle, and should have no right to a fu­el sub­sidy de­signed for pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, and that in­cludes me Mr Deputy Speak­er.” Man­ning thun­dered in the House.

The com­ment did not go un­no­ticed by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) shad­ow Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Davin­dranath Tan­coo who asked if this was the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy po­si­tion, but up to press time there was no re­sponse from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter nor any­one on the Gov­ern­ment bench­es.

Man­ning gave as an ex­am­ple the ben­e­fit a per­son whose ve­hi­cle re­quired less gas than a lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle would re­ceive com­pared to the per­son with the larg­er fu­el tank.

“If you have a 50 per cent sub­sidy on fu­el, if you are dri­ving a mo­tor ve­hi­cle that cost you $100 to full your tank, that means the state will be pay­ing a 50 per cent sub­sidy on your fu­el. If you are dri­ving a mo­tor ve­hi­cle, a lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle per­haps, and it cost $500 to fill the tank the state will be pay­ing $250 on your be­half, and that is why a fu­el sub­sidy is whol­ly in­ef­fi­cient when it comes to pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion and that is one of the ma­jor rea­sons why it is so waste­ful. It acts as a dis­in­cen­tive for con­ser­va­tion of fu­el, it pro­motes traf­fic and pol­lu­tion and is a drain on our for­eign ex­change.” The Ju­nior Fi­nance Min­is­ter told the House.

Man­ning who is the son of the late Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and now rep­re­sents the same con­stituen­cy of San Fer­nan­do East, gave a sto­ry of a la­dy in Mara­bel­la called Miss He­len who he said would drop chil­dren to school be­cause fam­i­lies, in­clud­ing the Man­nings, had on­ly one ve­hi­cle dur­ing those days.

He said cheap mo­tor ve­hi­cles and cheap fu­el en­cour­aged traf­fic on the na­tion’s roads and iden­ti­fied the im­por­ta­tion of mo­tor ve­hi­cles as one of the largest drains on the coun­try’s for­eign ex­change.

Last Mon­day Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced an in­crease in the price of all liq­uid fu­els.

He ar­gued that the sub­sidy was a bur­den in the trea­sury and in­creased the price of su­per and pre­mi­um fu­el by $1 a litre.

“Madam Speak­er, as in­di­cat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, the Gov­ern­ment is of the view that it is un­pro­duc­tive to spend more than $2 bil­lion per year sub­si­dis­ing fu­el and that this mon­ey could be bet­ter spent else­where. I have list­ed the ar­eas where the Gov­ern­ment is al­ready com­mit­ted to spend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars on so­cial grants, ed­u­ca­tion, health, and trans­porta­tion among many oth­er ar­eas. Spend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars sub­si­dis­ing fu­el, when this mon­ey could be di­rect­ed to cre­at­ing jobs and as­sist­ing the poor and vul­ner­a­ble makes no sense, in our view,” Im­bert told the Par­lia­ment.

He added, “Ac­cord­ing­ly, with oil prices still in the US$90 range, we are of the firm view that an­oth­er in­crease in fu­el prices is re­gret­tably re­quired. We have there­fore de­cid­ed to in­crease, as of to­day, the prices of pre­mi­um and su­per gaso­line, and kerosene by $1 per litre and diesel by 50 cents a litre.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said even with the new fu­el prices, if oil prices av­er­age US$95 per bar­rel for Fis­cal 2023, the Gov­ern­ment will still be re­quired to spend $1.45 bil­lion to sub­sidise the price of fu­el. He added if oil prices av­er­age US$90 per bar­rel in 2023, it will still have to spend $1.2 bil­lion sub­si­dis­ing fu­el.

Man­ning in­sist­ed that the sub­si­dies were de­signed and meant for pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, the prob­lem with the fu­el sub­sidy he posit­ed is that it is in­ef­fi­cient and is an in­ef­fi­cient means of al­le­vi­at­ing pover­ty and in many cas­es it ben­e­fits the wealthy more than it would ben­e­fit the poor in T&T.

He said the sav­ings will be used to as­sist the poor and in­sist­ed even with the re­duc­tion in the sub­si­dies T&T re­mains the coun­try in the Caribbean with the low­est cost of liv­ing.

The Ju­nior Fi­nance Min­is­ter al­so launched a scathing at­tack on who he called eco­nom­ic com­men­ta­tors and while he nev­er iden­ti­fied those com­men­ta­tors he ac­cused them of be­ing po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tives, or be­ing cal­lous and lack­ing knowl­edge of how the econ­o­my works.

As an ex­am­ple, the rook­ie MP, hav­ing en­tered the house for the first time in 2020, in­sist­ed that de­spite all of the pre­dic­tions that the coun­try would have run out of for­eign ex­change, the re­serves in the Cen­tral Bank were now at USD $6.8 bil­lion as at the end of Au­gust.

He said there were some who were try­ing to force a run on the cur­ren­cy and a de­val­u­a­tion of the TT dol­lar with all the at­tend­ing in­fla­tion­ary pres­sure and hard­ship for the pop­u­la­tion.

The Ju­nior Fi­nance Min­is­ter al­so at­tacked an­oth­er econ­o­mist who he de­scribed as cal­lous for want­i­ng the Gov­ern­ment to re­duce the size of the pub­lic ser­vice even as the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was on­go­ing.

Man­ning told the Low­er House, “This cal­lous gen­tle­men, while peo­ple were loos­ing their lives and liveli­hoods de­mand­ed a dread­ed de­val­u­a­tion of our cur­ren­cy and a dra­mat­ic slash­ing of our pub­lic ser­vice work­force, maybe up to 10 or 15 per cent of our pub­lic ser­vice, in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic.”

The Op­po­si­tion UNC ac­cused Man­ning of us­ing the cov­er of the House to at­tack peo­ple out­side the House who had no way of de­fend­ing them­selves and asked him to iden­ti­fy who these peo­ple were. He did not say and the Deputy Speak­er of the House did not up­hold any of the ob­jec­tions.