The de­bate on the Bud­get will be­gin in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­mor­row at 10 am.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is due to re­spond to the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill that was read in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. Here are 5 key things to note.

1. Op­po­si­tion Leader will have al­most 4 hours to re­spond:

The Op­po­si­tion's first re­spon­der is al­lowed the same amount of time that the mover of the Bud­get took to present the Bill. In the case of the mover, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, the Par­lia­ment's Stand­ing Or­ders al­low for "in­def­i­nite' speak­ing time. The same is al­lo­cat­ed to the Op­po­si­tion's first re­spon­der, who is usu­al­ly the Op­po­si­tion Leader. Min­is­ter Im­bert spoke for 3 hours and 59 min­utes, which means Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be af­ford­ed the same amount of time to­mor­row.

2. Kick­start of the de­bate:

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's re­sponse of­fi­cial­ly kick­starts the Bud­get de­bate which can run for sev­er­al days. The start of the de­bate is usu­al­ly left for sev­er­al days af­ter the read­ing of the Bud­get, to al­low the Op­po­si­tion to pre­pare for it. In this case, it comes four days af­ter Min­is­ter Im­bert's read­ing on Mon­day.

3. Oth­er mem­bers al­lot­ted 45 min­utes to speak:

Ac­cord­ing to the Stand­ing Or­ders of the Par­lia­ment, each mem­ber of the House, oth­er than the mover and the first re­spon­der, is al­lowed 45 min­utes to speak dur­ing the de­bate. This is dif­fer­ent from reg­u­lar bills which al­low for 30 min­utes of speak­ing time. Mem­bers are al­so al­lowed an ex­ten­sion of 10 min­utes once it is put to the House for a vote. Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters usu­al­ly use their time to ex­pound on the Bud­getary mat­ters re­lat­ed to their min­istries. The Op­po­si­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly us­es its MPs as 'Shad­ow Min­is­ters' to re­spond when par­tic­u­lar Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters speak.

4. Broad scope of de­bate:

The Bud­get is a fi­nan­cial bill. Un­like oth­er de­bates which lim­it mem­bers to speak with­in the scope of a bill's con­tents, fi­nan­cial bills and par­tic­u­lar­ly the Bud­get, have a wide scope and there­fore mem­bers can speak broad­ly on many top­ics rang­ing from crime, health, the econ­o­my, To­ba­go de­vel­op­ment, so­cial mat­ters and more.

5. What hap­pens next:

At the end of the de­bate in the Low­er House, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives changes in­to a Fi­nance Com­mit­tee where the bill is ex­am­ined be­fore it goes back to the House to be passed. The Fi­nance Com­mit­tee is made up of all mem­bers of the Low­er House. The bill is al­so tak­en to the Sen­ate where it is moved in a more con­densed form fol­low­ing which the de­bate be­gins with­out de­lay.