Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

No to a fu­el price hike, but sup­port for CEPEP and URP work­ers, im­me­di­ate an­ti-crime so­lu­tions, and a new med­ical busi­ness sec­tor.

With the 2026 bud­get loom­ing, these are among the key views of some unions, busi­ness groups and politi­cians re­gard­ing their “fears and favourites” for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s first bud­get.

A date for the pre­sen­ta­tion of the bud­get is ex­pect­ed soon, and is tipped for Oc­to­ber 6.

Yes­ter­day, T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dale Par­son said his “favourites” in­clud­ed the hope that the bud­get en­sures there is no VAT on raw ma­te­ri­als for man­u­fac­tur­ing in­put and to have more ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tions at the Port-of-Spain and Pt Lisas ports.”

Fears?

“I hope we don’t see any more in­creas­es in fu­el prices for ve­hi­cles,” Par­sons said.

As­sist CEPEP, URP work­ers
—SWUTT’s Bai­ley

Steel Work­ers Union of TT pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, who al­so didn’t want a fu­el price hike, added that his “favourite” wish for the bud­get was for Gov­ern­ment to have the for­mer Arcelor Mit­tal plant up af­ter ten years of clo­sure and to have full trans­paren­cy on the ven­ture.

“Leg­isla­tive changes and a firm in­ter­ven­tion are need­ed to have this is­sue fi­nal­ly rec­ti­fied. Stan­dard and Poor’s down­grad­ing of T&T stat­ed that the econ­o­my re­quires di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. This plant can as­sist this,” Bai­ley added.

Bai­ley said the sale of the prop­er­ty was made to the T&T Iron and Steel Com­pa­ny in Au­gust 2024.

He said, “While the en­ti­ty paid the req­ui­site ten per cent down pay­ment out of the US$30m sale price, the plant is oc­cu­pied. Why is this so? We want to know what kind of bobol is go­ing on. So, trans­paren­cy is bad­ly need­ed, and my fear is that in the bud­get, that may not hap­pen.

Bai­ley said his oth­er “fear” for the bud­get is “that it will come and go, and the Gov­ern­ment may not fix the is­sue of dis­placed work­ers from CEPEP and URP.

“Work­ers live pay cheque to pay cheque and have been out of work for some time. They need a safe­ty net. I hope this is­sue turns from a ‘fear’ to a ‘favourite’ with so­lu­tions for them.”

Crime re­duc­tion need­ed
— Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said their “favourite” most ur­gent de­mand cen­tred on full-scale com­mit­ment to crime re­duc­tion, re­quir­ing a sub­stan­tial bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for in­creased po­lice pres­ence in Cen­tral Trinidad and im­me­di­ate im­ple­men­ta­tion of stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

Ma­haraj al­so hopes for ac­tion in ad­dress­ing in­ef­fi­cien­cy that is crip­pling busi­ness.

“The bud­get must im­ple­ment im­prove­ment in the ease of do­ing busi­ness, specif­i­cal­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed fund­ing for the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of all pub­lic ser­vices to elim­i­nate bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays in per­mits and li­cens­es, and a max­i­mum 90-day turn­around pol­i­cy for VAT re­funds to in­stant­ly in­ject cap­i­tal back in­to the busi­ness sec­tor,” he said.

“Full trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty on for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion is need­ed to en­sure eq­ui­table ac­cess for all busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small/medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs). We do not sup­port a de­val­u­a­tion of the TT dol­lar. Fo­cus must re­main on fis­cal dis­ci­pline, in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and boost­ing non-en­er­gy sec­tor ex­ports.”

Grow econ­o­my via new med­ical busi­ness—Fuad

For­mer UNC MP Dr Fuad Khan’s “favourites” in­volve a plan for eco­nom­ic growth via a med­ical busi­ness sec­tor and ex­pan­sion of for­eign ex­change ac­cess.

Khan rec­om­mend­ed fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal as a dig­i­tal hos­pi­tal, in­volv­ing part­ner­ships with UK and US med­ical so­ci­eties and send­ing re­tired su­per spe­cial­ists to as­sist in de­vel­op­ing the hos­pi­tal as a stand­alone en­ti­ty un­der the Health Min­istry, not the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty.

“Med­ical ed­u­ca­tion tourism with re­search can earn much US dol­lars. Stand-alone spe­cial­ist cen­tres can al­low re­search and de­vel­op­ment, and pe­riph­er­al hos­pi­tals can be gen­er­al hos­pi­tals with re­fer­rals based to the spe­cial­ist cen­tres.”

Khan sug­gest­ed amend­ments to the Ex­change Con­trol Act to al­low free flow of USD and dol­lar­is­ing the econ­o­my to al­low USD and TT to be used with in­ter­na­tion­al cur­ren­cy.

“Amend­ment of the For­eign In­vest­ment Act can free up en­try of in­vest­ments with­out the present sup­pres­sive bu­reau­cra­cy,” he said.

His fear?

“It’s that the bud­get will in­volve the same old pat­terns,” Khan said.

For­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader Kirt Sin­nette said their lead­er­ship gave bud­get rec­om­men­da­tions to the Gov­ern­ment.

”My favourite wish is for sports to play a key role in the bud­get’s frame­work and al­so to have youth em­ploy­ment. I wouldn’t want to see any fu­el price hike. That in­creas­es the cost of liv­ing over­all.”