Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Rent As­sess­ment Board will have to play an even more rig­or­ous mon­i­tor­ing role ahead to en­sure that the Land­lord Sur­charge im­posed in the 2026 Bud­get is not un­fair­ly passed on to oth­er peo­ple, says Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh.

Swarats­ingh an­nounced this in the Sen­ate last night while wind­ing up de­bate on the 2026 Bud­get. The Bud­get was passed at 10.15 pm.

Yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate - of on­ly one day - was the fi­nal process with­in the Par­lia­ment that was re­quired to com­plete the ex­am­i­na­tion of the 2026 Bud­get.

It was pre­sent­ed on Oc­to­ber 13, de­bate in the Low­er House was done over Oc­to­ber 17-18 and it was ex­am­ined for five days in the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee. The Bud­get has to be in place be­fore mon­thend to cov­er Gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions for the new fis­cal year, which be­gan this month.

In con­clud­ing the de­bate last night, Swarats­ingh re­spond­ed to points raised by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sophia Chote.

His dis­clo­sure on the Rent As­sess­ment Board play­ing a more rig­or­ous mon­i­tor­ing role per­tained to the Land­lord Sur­charge stip­u­lat­ed in the Bud­get. There have been pro­jec­tions from var­i­ous quar­ters that land­lords will sim­ply pass the sur­charge on to ten­ants.

Swarats­ingh al­so said when the Prime Min­is­ter vis­it­ed the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in Wash­ing­ton re­cent­ly, the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter met with the US Com­merce De­part­ment to talk about tar­iffs.

The US has placed a 15 per cent tar­iff on ex­ports from T&T. There had been out­cry lo­cal­ly for this to be re­vert­ed to the orig­i­nal 10 per cent fig­ure it was be­fore.

Swarats­ingh added that Gov­ern­ment has had on­go­ing meet­ings with the US De­part­ment of Trade and Com­merce to deal with the tar­iffs mat­ter.

"In fact, we have con­tin­ued to have those con­ver­sa­tions and en­gage with them be­hind closed doors," he added.

Swarats­ingh slammed Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Sen­a­tors' con­tri­bu­tions.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi raised the mat­ter of Venezuela's then pro­posed de­nun­ci­a­tion of the En­er­gy Co-op­er­a­tion Frame­work Agree­ment with T&T and pro­posed sus­pen­sion of all bi­lat­er­al gas agree­ments. Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro con­firmed the sus­pen­sion of the en­er­gy deals last night, even while the de­bate was on­go­ing.

"Most peo­ple are mis­tak­ing this for a talk on the Drag­on deal," he said, ex­press­ing con­cern on the im­pact on the Man­a­tee field.

Say­ing the Man­a­tee field may be af­fect­ed more than the Drag­on field, Al-Rawi added, "I re­spect­ful­ly want the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter or those in the cham­ber tonight to speak to the im­pact of this frame­work agree­ment with Venezuela as it specif­i­cal­ly re­lates to the Man­a­tee as­pect in Shell's ex­ploita­tion of that."

Al-Rawi stressed that con­fi­dence in T&T's petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor is its lifeblood.

"We wish for con­fi­dence to be as­sured by way of ex­pla­na­tions, demon­stra­tions of diplo­ma­cy, and by way of pru­dent po­si­tion be­cause we can­not af­ford to get it wrong!" Al-Rawi said.

He said con­fi­dence's im­pact on a coun­try's rev­enue item, which can be caused by diplo­mat­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty, is very rel­e­vant to the Bud­get to­day. Al-Rawi called for an­swers on what prospects are on the hori­zon, as al­lud­ed to by the Prime Min­is­ter when she said T&T's econ­o­my is not de­pen­dent on Venezuela.

Al-Rawi stressed that at­ten­tion should be paid to the geopo­lit­i­cal cli­mates that are in gear in re­la­tion to Venezuela, T&T and oth­er as­pects.