Shas­tri Boodan

Gov­ern­ment may have no al­ter­na­tive but to in­crease the cost of fu­el once again if glob­al oil prices do not fall.

This point was raised at a joint post-bud­get news con­fer­ence host­ed by the Cou­va-Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce (CPLCC) yes­ter­day at the Cham­ber’s Can­den Road head­quar­ters.

Derek Joseph, spokesman for the Fed­er­a­tion of Agri­cul­tur­al and Non-Fi­nan­cial Co­op­er­a­tives, said “Once that price cross­es the thresh­old that the Gov­ern­ment would have set, they would have no choice but to in­crease be­cause it would af­fect the bud­get, and liv­ing in a re­al world, God for­bid, should the price go up, they would have no choice, it’s a mat­ter of the Gov­ern­ment al­low­ing the mar­ket to flow on its own or cause things to hap­pen on its own, and their in­ter­ven­tion would on­ly fal­si­fy things. If the oil price goes up they should sub­sidise no fur­ther.”

Richie Sookhai, the pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) said the gov­ern­ment is on a dri­ve to cap the sub­sidy at $1 bil­lion.

Robin Nar­i­nesingh, the Pres­i­dent of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, said T&T is not a price mak­er but a price tak­er in the fu­el are­na and does not con­trol the pric­ing struc­ture of oil on the glob­al mar­ket.

Nar­i­nesingh said he was pleased with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s ex­pla­na­tion in the 2022-2023 bud­get on en­er­gy sec­tor tax­es.

Nar­i­nesingh said “He pro­ceed­ed to give us the val­ue chain from ex­plo­ration right down to the price at the gas pump. It was a re­al­ly well pre­sent­ed analy­sis of how prices are de­rived at. How­ev­er as a cit­i­zen of the coun­try we are un­der some aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures and we hope that the Pan­dem­ic that we just came out from gave us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see who are the most valu­able work­ers in T&T. A lot of us can work from home and it gave us a re­set. As a re­sult of that we can con­serve the way we dri­ve and have work­ers at home.”

Mukesh Ram­s­ingh, the pres­i­dent of the CPLCC, said the cham­ber was look­ing now to see what would be done to as­sist SME’s. Ram­s­ingh said “We do wel­come that $500,000 mil­lion in loans from the gov­ern­ment to as­sist small busi­ness­es. We do wel­come that tax amnesty, that will go a long way to as­sist busi­ness re­cov­er­ing from the Pan­dem­ic.”

“It wasn’t over­all a bad bud­get, but it’s a tough pill to swal­low,” Ram­s­ingh said.

Speak­ing on the bud­get Sookhai said he was pleased to see re­bates for the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, the rais­ing of the per­son­al al­lowance tax ceil­ing.