Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day an­nounced an ear­ly Christ­mas gift for pub­lic ser­vants in what some called a re­lief bud­get.

Im­bert an­nounced that some 37,000 pub­lic ser­vants will get their back­pay from ne­go­ti­a­tions by Christ­mas and an in­crease in min­i­mum wage from $17.50 to $20.50 from Jan­u­ary 2024.

Stu­dents who re­quire as­sis­tance will al­so re­ceive a $1,000 school sup­ply grant.

Gov­ern­ment has al­so man­dat­ed the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to triple the num­ber of po­lice re­cruits in 2024 from 300 to 1,000, and ac­tion will be tak­en on the for­eign ex­change sup­ply is­sue.

These were some of the con­ces­sions pre­sent­ed by Im­bert in the 2024 Bud­get pack­age in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, in an ad­dress last­ing four hours and eight min­utes

“In this year, 2024, we did not feel that we should im­pose any fur­ther bur­dens on our cit­i­zens, but rather, we should pro­vide some re­lief in key ar­eas to those at the low­er end of the scale,” Im­bert said in his ninth Bud­get.

“In 2015, we said ‘Let’s do this,’ in 2024, we are do­ing this!”

The 2024 Bud­get is $59.209 bil­lion, more than the orig­i­nal 2023 Bud­get which was $57.6B. This year’s Bud­get was themed “Build­ing Ca­pac­i­ty for Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and Growth With­in a World of Chal­lenges.”

Ed­u­ca­tion took the top al­lo­ca­tion—$8.022 bil­lion. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty re­ceived $6.912B, with Im­bert promis­ing to in­crease the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s fund­ing in the mid-year re­view if nec­es­sary.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, which re­quest­ed $4.5B, re­ceived $2.585B—$64m more than its 2023 al­lo­ca­tion.

Im­bert based the bud­get on an oil price of US$85 and gas price of US$5 per mmb­tu—less than the prices for the 2023 Bud­get. The pro­ject­ed fis­cal deficit is $5.197B.

Im­bert said, “Fis­cal mea­sures will fo­cus on im­prov­ing the well-be­ing of every in­di­vid­ual in our so­ci­ety so that they can reach their full po­ten­tial. We’re in­vest­ing in our peo­ple.”

Propos­ing ac­tion to min­imise T&T’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­bal­ance and stim­u­late con­sumer spend­ing aimed at eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion, he added, “To achieve this ob­jec­tive, I pro­pose to in­crease the min­i­mum wage by 17 per cent, or $3 per hour, from $17.50 to $20.50 per hour ... ef­fec­tive from Jan­u­ary 1, 2024.”

Im­bert said this will help al­most 200,000 work­ers and in­crease the month­ly take-home pay by over $500 per month for work­ers who work a ba­sic 40-hour week and earn the min­i­mum wage.

“For those who cur­rent­ly work a 12-hour shift at the min­i­mum wage for a six-day week, like some se­cu­ri­ty guards, this will in­crease their month­ly take-home pay by over $900 per month,” Im­bert added.

To fur­ther as­sist fam­i­lies in need, he said in 2024, Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide a school sup­plies and book grant of $1,000 based on a means test, which will as­sist at least 65,000 chil­dren at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment will bring the 37,000 pub­lic sec­tor work­ers who ac­cept­ed Gov­ern­ment’s four per cent ne­go­ti­a­tion of­fer up to their new salary lev­els im­me­di­ate­ly.

“I’m al­so giv­ing these work­ers an un­der­tak­ing that all min­istries and agen­cies in­volved will be pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary funds to pay this $1.0 bil­lion in back­pay by Christ­mas 2023, and I’m re­quest­ing all per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and ac­count­ing of­fi­cers to im­me­di­ate­ly start prepar­ing the pa­per­work to achieve this dead­line for these pay­ments,” Im­bert added.

He al­so said the one-time lump sum pay­ment of $4,000 will be tax-ex­empt for the 1,700 peo­ple who re­tired (2014-16) com­pul­so­ri­ly, vol­un­tar­i­ly, with per­mis­sion, or on the grounds of ill health.

Food­box makes a re­turn

Apart from tripling po­lice re­cruits ahead, Im­bert an­nounced sub­stan­tial bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions for TTPS ve­hi­cles, equip­ment, ves­sels—and the es­tab­lish­ment of “trust­ed and vet­ted po­lice units with­in the po­lice ser­vice, staffed by high­er-paid of­fi­cers of proven in­tegri­ty”.

The mar­ket box pro­gramme for poor and vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens will al­so be rein­tro­duced. Ben­e­fi­cia­ries will be iden­ti­fied from the Food Card data­base, among oth­er ar­eas. The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry will re­struc­ture the Food Card Pro­gramme to in­clude a manda­to­ry mar­ket box com­po­nent, he said.

Im­bert said WASA’s re­fur­bish­ing and up­grad­ing of ma­jor wa­ter treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties will im­prove the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of sup­ply to over 300,000 peo­ple in north­east Trinidad and 400,000 in south Trinidad.

Food­box makes a re­turn

Im­bert made it clear that prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tion be­gins in 2024, to be col­lect­ed by the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. He said he has re­ceived the res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion roll for T&T and this will be sent to the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion, which will set in mo­tion pro­ce­dur­al frame­works for col­lect­ing res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax­es “in the first in­stance”.

He said tax will be used by cor­po­ra­tions for goods/ser­vices and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes—not per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture. Law will be made to en­sure the mon­ey isn’t used for the wrong pur­pose. He ex­pect­ed that more than 50 per cent of all res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties will pay prop­er­ty tax­es be­tween $540 and $1,080 an­nu­al­ly.

In WASA’s new busi­ness mod­el, de­pen­dence on gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions—which be­tween 2019-2023 was $8.118 bil­lion—will be re­duced, he added. In the process, WASA’s net deficit is ex­pect­ed to sub­stan­tial­ly nar­row “fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of WASA’s price re­view by the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion”.

Un­em­ploy­ment drops

Im­bert, who de­liv­ered a glow­ing eco­nom­ic re­port on T&T’s per­for­mance, said un­em­ploy­ment has dropped in 2023. He said T&T was the on­ly coun­try in the re­gion and Latin Amer­i­ca with an im­prov­ing eco­nom­ic out­look. Im­bert thanked Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his “sup­port and un­der­stand­ing”.

“Be­fore the pre­sen­ta­tion of this bud­get, spec­u­la­tion was rife as to what it would con­tain. All sorts of sce­nar­ios played out in the pub­lic do­main, most of them to­tal­ly un­in­formed ...” Im­bert said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­liv­ers her re­ply from 1.30 pm Fri­day.

$95M boost for TTPS to tack­le crime

Speak­ing at length on T&T's safe­ty and the TTPS, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said, "We re­main par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbed at the un­ten­able lev­el of mur­ders with­in our so­ci­ety. Crime and vi­o­lence re­main press­ing and trou­bling prob­lems that se­vere­ly un­der­mine our cit­i­zens' wel­fare."

He said the "whol­ly un­ac­cept­able in­ci­dence of mur­der" is an area of pri­ma­ry con­cern re­quir­ing ur­gent ac­tion, and in light of the num­ber of guns and il­le­gal drugs en­ter­ing T&T, Gov­ern­ment is en­hanc­ing re­source ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty through strength­en­ing of bor­der-con­trol ca­pac­i­ty.

He not­ed that the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive po­lice of­fi­cers is con­stant­ly af­fect­ed by manda­to­ry re­tire­ment and/or res­ig­na­tion of of­fi­cers and by the num­ber of of­fi­cers

on va­ca­tion or oth­er forms of leave.

"Ac­cord­ing­ly, to bring the Po­lice Ser­vice back up to full strength, we have man­dat­ed the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to triple the in­take of po­lice re­cruits in 2024, from the usu­al an­nu­al in­take of 300 re­cruits a year to 1,000 re­cruits in 2024.

"To fa­cil­i­tate this sub­stan­tial in­crease, a hy­brid ap­proach to the train­ing of re­cruits will be em­ployed us­ing fa­cil­i­ties out­side of the Po­lice Acad­e­my. The Min­istry of Youth and

Na­tion­al Ser­vice will make avail­able the use of the Ch­aguara­mas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, now un­der ren­o­va­tion ... a num­ber of schools will al­so be used af­ter reg­u­lar hours to train the ad­di­tion­al po­lice re­cruits."

Im­bert said the TTPS will al­so em­ploy in­creas­ing use of so­cial me­dia to en­hance com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween law en­force­ment and cit­i­zens, to im­prove in­ter­dic­tion of crimes such as home in­va­sions.

The Bud­get in­cludes ad­di­tion­al sup­port mech­a­nisms for the TTPS - $80m mil­lion for new ve­hi­cles and equip­ment over and above the 2023 al­lo­ca­tions.

"This will al­low po­lice to ex­pand and es­tab­lish more com­mu­ni­ty pa­trols to give the po­lice greater pres­ence and vis­i­bil­i­ty with­in com­mu­ni­ties and cit­i­zens a greater sense of com­fort," he said.

A fur­ther $15m is al­lo­cat­ed for a River­ine Po­lice Unit at the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion. This is for the de­sign and com­mence­ment of con­struc­tion of a jet­ty at Care­nage and ac­qui­si­tion of up to 10 fast and nim­ble in­shore ves­sels to pa­trol ma­jor rivers and in­shore ar­eas, which are ar­eas of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, he said.

He said Gov­ern­ment recog­nised that, in many in­stances, the lack of trust be­tween the po­lice and the com­mu­ni­ty con­strains ef­fec­tive crime in­ter­ven­tion.

"The TTPS is now es­tab­lish­ing trust­ed and vet­ted po­lice units with­in the po­lice ser­vice, staffed by high­er-paid of­fi­cers of proven in­tegri­ty. We're aim­ing at im­prov­ing po­lice ac­count­abil­i­ty, re-es­tab­lish­ing trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty be­tween the po­lice and the com­mu­ni­ties and ul­ti­mate­ly, serv­ing to es­tab­lish and main­tain or­der, as well as to

guar­an­tee sta­bil­i­ty, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. These units have col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment an an­ti-crime agen­da."

He added, "To de­tect the im­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal arms, new mod­ern scan­ners are be­ing pro­cured for the ports, bond­ed ware­hous­es and tran­sit sheds. We've award­ed a con­tract at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $90 mil­lion for the sup­ply, de­liv­ery, in­stal­la­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of four large-scale, non-in­tru­sive in­spec­tion scan­ners for ship­ping con­tain­ers, which we ex­pect to de­ploy at the ports of Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas. We ex­pect these scan­ners will be in place in 2024."

Six­teen hand­held scan­ners are al­so be­ing ob­tained by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, he said.

Im­bert said apart from T&T's cape-class-pa­trol boats, Gov­ern­ment is en­sur­ing the op­er­a­tional ef­fec­tive­ness of the 12 Damen pa­trol ves­sels through the pro­vi­sion of lo­gis­tics sup­port and main­te­nance ser­vices.

Im­bert thanked the US for do­nat­ing naval as­sets to T&T's Coast Guard. These will se­cure T&T's river­ine in­lets, which are be­ing used by smug­glers to im­port nar­cotics and il­le­gal guns, he said.