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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Minister: Govt to use surplus income for budget deficit, social programmes

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1153 days ago
20220516
Minister of Finance Colm Imbert.

Minister of Finance Colm Imbert.

Office of the Parliament

Renu­ka Singh

Bet­ter than pro­ject­ed.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day that in the 2022 bud­get, the Gov­ern­ment had ini­tial­ly pro­ject­ed a fis­cal deficit of an over­all $9.095 bil­lion.

He said for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2021, to March 1, 2022, an over­all deficit of $4. 754 bil­lion was pro­ject­ed but in­stead, the Gov­ern­ment record­ed a sur­plus.

In fact, the in­creased glob­al en­er­gy prices mean the Gov­ern­ment will be mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant de­posit in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

He said the Gov­ern­ment al­so re­duced the over­draft lev­el to 50 per cent, which Im­bert said he “had not seen for years.”

“And that was based on the pre­lim­i­nary da­ta avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment back in Sep­tem­ber 2021. How­ev­er, I am pleased to re­port that in­stead of a deficit of $4.754 bil­lion at the end of March as was ex­pect­ed, based on rev­enues re­ceived and ex­pen­di­ture in­curred, the Gov­ern­ment has ac­tu­al­ly record­ed a sur­plus of $654 mil­lion,” Im­bert said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view.

“Some $5.408 bil­lion high­er than the pro­ject­ed in­come in the first six months of the fis­cal year.”

Im­bert at­trib­uted that sur­plus to the high­er than ex­pect­ed re­ceipts of tax­es on in­comes and prof­its which stood at $3.2 bil­lion.

He said be­cause of the pos­i­tive cash flow based on in­creased en­er­gy prices, there was more good news.

“It has al­lowed us to sta­bilise our debt and to re­duce bor­row­ing. As a re­sult, I am hap­py to an­nounce that the Gov­ern­ment has not bor­rowed any mon­ey lo­cal­ly or ex­ter­nal­ly to fi­nance the Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture since De­cem­ber 2021,” he said.

“We haven’t bor­rowed any mon­ey for five months and our pub­lic debt, be­lieve it or not, is ac­tu­al­ly com­ing down and as of to­day, stands at $129.8 bil­lion, $800 mil­lion less than in De­cem­ber 2021.”

Im­bert said tax­es on goods and ser­vices brought in an ad­di­tion­al $178 mil­lion and tax­es from in­ter­na­tion­al trade, which are the du­ty tax­es, stood at $22 mil­lion. Non-tax rev­enue, he said, stood at $604 mil­lion.

“Now if we drill in­to the fig­ures, what we find is that the good per­for­mance of tax­es on in­comes and prof­its was due to high­er than pro­ject­ed re­ceipts col­lect­ed from oth­er com­pa­nies and that cat­e­go­ry in­cludes the petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies, which are prov­ing to be a sig­nif­i­cant life jack­et for T&T due to the con­sid­er­ably in­creased prices of petro­chem­i­cals,” Im­bert said.

“For those of us who mon­i­tor these things, one would see that the prices of petro­chem­i­cals; am­mo­nia, methanol, urea, et cetera, have dou­bled, tripled and quadru­pled over the last cou­ple of years.”

Im­bert said there was a “spill over” in the amnesty pay­ments from 2021 when it was ex­tend­ed to Oc­to­ber.

“We got an ad­di­tion­al tax amnesty, in that month (Oc­to­ber) pay­ment of $43 mil­lion,” he said.

Im­bert said there was an ad­di­tion­al $1.17 bil­lion re­ceived in pay­ments from oil com­pa­nies, which were at­trib­uted to the in­creased glob­al price of oil and gas.

He said ad­di­tion­al in­come from the high­er in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy prices will be used to re­duce the bud­get deficit.

“This has been a bug­bear for T&T for sev­er­al years be­cause of the ex­po­nen­tial in­crease in ex­pen­di­ture, Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture over the 2010 to 2015 pe­ri­od from $45 bil­lion to $63 bil­lion,” he said, adding the Gov­ern­ment spent years try­ing to “throt­tle back” from that spend.

“We could not sup­port the ex­pen­di­ture of $63 bil­lion, which is where it had reached,” he said.

Im­bert said the State will al­so be mak­ing a de­posit in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund “in ac­cor­dance with the law.”

“The way the HSE fund for­mu­la works is that it is cal­cu­lat­ed based on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis, it is a post-fac­tor cal­cu­la­tion,” he said, adding that the State will be de­posit­ing some 60 per cent of the en­er­gy earn­ings in US dol­lars.

Funds will al­so be utilised to in­crease so­cial wel­fare grants.

“We have an age­ing pop­u­la­tion and so the num­ber of peo­ple who qual­i­fy for se­nior cit­i­zens pen­sion is in­creas­ing and there­fore to meet the in­creas­ing de­mands, the ad­di­tion­al funds would go to that,” he said.

Im­bert said the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) was cur­rent­ly ne­go­ti­at­ing with the labour unions to up­date the pay­ments and bring the ne­go­ti­a­tions pe­ri­od to 2021 and the ad­di­tion­al funds ac­quired will now be chan­nelled to­wards that once the ne­go­ti­a­tions are com­plet­ed. He said the Gov­ern­ment al­so had a ma­jor road re­pair and de-silt­ing pro­gramme on the cards.

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