Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day sought to bring the pop­u­la­tion back to re­al­i­ty, sig­nalling that while the econ­o­my has sta­bilised, there just isn’t mon­ey to throw around and ex­pens­es must be kept in check. The Min­is­ter again warned that Gov­ern­ment can­not af­ford more than the 4 per cent on the ta­ble for pub­lic sec­tor unions as it “is the best we can do,” but as­sured it stands ready to make good on the of­fer as soon as it is ac­cept­ed.

While Im­bert gave with one hand, via an in­crease in tax al­lowance from $84,000 to $90,000 per year, which means in­di­vid­u­als earn­ing $7,500 or less will be ex­empt from pay­ing tax­es, cit­i­zens will feel the pinch hard­est with the in­crease at the pumps by a dol­lar for Pre­mi­um and Su­per gaso­line and kerosene and 50 cents for diesel—all with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

LPG re­mained at $21 for a 20-pound cylin­der.

Al­ready, the cost of liv­ing is ris­ing and with the fu­el in­creas­es, trans­porta­tion fares will un­doubt­ed­ly go up, which means con­sumers and com­muters will have to fork out more for pub­lic trans­porta­tion and goods and ser­vices.

To off­set the im­pact, Im­bert said per­sons on so­cial wel­fare will get a one-off $1,000 grant while those earn­ing $7,500 and un­der an­nu­al­ly will be ex­empt from pay­ing tax­es, but how far can that go.

The in­crease in fu­el prices do not au­gur well for those al­ready hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in deal­ing with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing. But Im­bert said the coun­try just could not af­ford the over TT$2B in fu­el sub­si­dies an­nu­al­ly.

Air­fares to To­ba­go al­so in­creased by $100 while the seabridge went up by $50.

Im­bert al­so an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment will be mov­ing to stamp out il­le­gal tim­ber­ing and quar­ry­ing and the theft of cop­per with fines and penal­ties to be in­creased.

The 2022-2023 Bud­get is val­ued at TT$57.6B and Im­bert used the theme Tenac­i­ty and Sta­bil­i­ty in the Face of Glob­al Chal­lenges. He said the Gov­ern­ment has been us­ing in­creased rev­enues from oil and gas in­creas­es due to the Ukraine-Rus­sia war smart­ly, and of that ad­di­tion­al rev­enue earned, TT$1.1B, or US$163M, had been de­posit­ed in­to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF).

Im­bert boast­ed of the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the econ­o­my de­spite the two years of COVID-19 that im­pact­ed fi­nances, say­ing de­spite every­thing, thou­sands in the pub­lic ser­vice kept their jobs and were paid salaries on time.

He paid trib­ute to health work­ers who had stayed the course dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, an­nounc­ing that Gov­ern­ment had al­lo­cat­ed $210M for fis­cal 2023 as a spe­cial ex gra­tia pay­ment to over 20,000 work­ers in the sec­tor.

Al­though he paint­ed a pic­ture of things be­ing un­der con­trol, Im­bert said T&T was not yet out of the woods.

While the re­al im­pact of the bud­get on the av­er­age cit­i­zen is yet to be re­alised, the fact is that some of the mea­sures an­nounced will im­pact those who can least af­ford it.

With prop­er­ty tax loom­ing on the hori­zon, there is not much for cit­i­zens to cheer about in the bud­get. Sav­ing graces are the school-to-work ap­pren­tice­ship al­lowance, which is geared at en­cour­ag­ing more busi­ness­es to hire per­sons for short-term ap­pren­tice­ships, GATE al­lo­ca­tion for those who pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cessed diplo­ma and as­so­ciate de­grees to do un­der­grad­u­ate lev­el study. In the com­ing days and weeks, how­ev­er, the re­al im­pact of the bud­get will be un­rav­elled for cit­i­zens.