The San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SJ­BA) has said it is "a bit con­cerned" with the pro­jec­tion of the oil price at $92.50 per bar­rel.

The SJ­BA was re­spond­ing to the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion made in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day.

"We need to be care­ful to not over stretch the pro­jec­tion of the coun­try's rev­enue," it said.

The As­so­ci­a­tion added, "With that said, we are pleased to wel­come the fol­low­ing points with­in the bud­get;

● Re­duc­tion in deficit from 9.1 bil­lion to 1.51 bil­lion (7.66 bil­lion down).

● Sig­nal to bol­ster the con­struc­tion sec­tor with start­ing new hous­ing projects. Hous­ing al­lo­ca­tion in­creased by 59% year over year.

● In­crease in per­son­al tax al­lowance for cit­i­zens by $6,000. This will aid cit­i­zens and coun­ter­act in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures.

● Al­lo­ca­tions to in­crease road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. 200 mil­lion for sec­ondary road re­pairs is wel­comed as well as 250 mil­lion for P.U.R.E.

● Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion in­creased 14% year over year.

● Min­istry of Works and Trans­port In­creased 7% year over year.

● The com­mit­ment to give fur­ther grants for ma­chin­ery in­vest­ment in man­u­fac­tur­ing.

● Tax Amnesty for SMEs on in­ter­est and penal­ties. We would await the break­down to in­form us of who qual­i­fies.

● We wel­come the USD 166mil in the HSF. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, we wish to high­light some ar­eas that are a bit con­cern­ing specif­i­cal­ly in the fol­low­ing ar­eas;

● Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty 2% in­crease year over year. Crime is out of hand and we would have liked to see a greater com­mit­ment in the form of in­vest­ment in train­ing and CCTV in­fra­struc­ture na­tion­al­ly.

● We are not par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with the in­crease in fu­el prices at this time as we have been warned by the IMF to man­age in­fla­tion. The knock on ef­fect of this will lead to in­creased prices to con­sumers.

● We did not see any com­mit­ment to deal with the in­for­mal sec­tor for NIB. This sec­tor of the econ­o­my is con­tin­u­ous­ly be­ing ig­nored. We al­so be­lieve in­creas­ing the VAT thresh­old can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive from the point that the strat­e­gy should be to cap­ture more of the in­for­mal sec­tor. We need to pay at­ten­tion to this is­sue.

● In an ef­fort to bol­ster ex­ports for TT, the in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram should go across all in­dus­tries and not on­ly Food & Bev­er­age.

● More at­ten­tion should be paid to VAT re­turns. We ap­pre­ci­ate the 4 bil­lion pay­out in 2022 but more still can be done."

"In all, we must com­mend the man­age­ment of the econ­o­my over the last year but we be­lieve the rev­enue pro­jec­tion is a bit op­ti­mistic. We al­so be­lieve that the in­creased ex­pen­di­ture pro­file pre­sent­ed will stim­u­late the econ­o­my. We are al­so pleased to see a fo­cus on stream­lin­ing state agen­cies for greater ef­fi­cien­cy. This will go a long way. We would al­so like to point out at this time and ad­vo­cate that the gov­ern­ment pay spe­cif­ic at­ten­tion to rel­e­vant on the job as well as prac­ti­cal train­ing in the pub­lic sec­tor to fur­ther add to in­creas­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and per­for­mance with­in state agen­cies. In all, we give the bud­get a score of 7.5 out of 10."

SEE MORE: Bud­get 2023: Air­bridge, seabridge, fu­el prices in­crease