Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmi­ki Ar­joon is pre­dict­ing that the price of fu­el will be in­creased, this af­ter­noon.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew to­day, Dr Ar­joon said Gov­ern­ment al­ready hint­ed at it dur­ing the “Spot­light on the Econ­o­my Fo­rum” ear­li­er this month.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert MP, had in­di­cat­ed that their pro­jec­tions show a $2.1 bil­lion fu­el sub­sidy bill for fis­cal 2023. Gov­ern­ment has stat­ed its in­ten­tion to cut that in half with the con­sumer left to ab­sorb the ad­di­tion­al cost.

Dr Ar­joon ques­tions whether this is the right time to fur­ther in­crease the cost of liv­ing.

His col­league, econ­o­mist Dr Dave Seer­at­tan, says while we are do­ing bet­ter as a coun­try in terms of rev­enue due to the re­cent rise in en­er­gy prices, there still are gaps that need to be filled, mov­ing for­ward.

He points to pri­or­i­ty ar­eas such as in­fra­struc­tur­al works and the most vul­ner­a­ble and the poor in so­ci­ety.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Seer­at­tan, the glob­al econ­o­my is still re­cov­er­ing from the fi­nan­cial cri­sis in the 2000s, and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic fur­ther com­pound­ed mat­ters. He rec­om­mends that ad­just­ments be made now to earn more rev­enue and pro­pel the econ­o­my for­ward.

And the chair­man of the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber is call­ing on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to find ways to re­duce its re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture in the up­com­ing fi­nan­cial year.

Mar­tin George says as it stands, To­ba­go spends 88 per­cent of its al­lo­ca­tion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment on pay­ing its staff and bills, which he be­lieves is not a good busi­ness mod­el.

He dis­agrees with calls for To­ba­go to get a larg­er slice of the fi­nan­cial al­lo­ca­tion, ar­gu­ing there should be bet­ter man­age­ment of what monies the THA ac­tu­al­ly re­ceives.

The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber boss points out that if the re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture is scaled back, there will be mon­ey left over to deal with one of To­ba­go's biggest needs—in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, specif­i­cal­ly an im­proved road net­work.

By law, To­ba­go is en­ti­tled to a min­i­mum of 4.5 per­cent of the Na­tion­al Bud­get.  In 2021, that fig­ure worked out to rough­ly $2.35 bil­lion.