Ensuring high levels of employment at a time when this country continues to feel the effects of the global economic downturn is a top priority of the 2009/2010 Budget, which will be presented by Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira in the Parliament today.
In addition, the Budget for the upcoming fiscal year will seek to ensure there is economic growth and focus on capital expenditure, as the Government prepares to receive less revenue due to record low natural gas prices.
Nunez-Tesheira made the disclosure yesterday in a telephone interview with the Express, while she and a team of ministry officials were in the midst of final preparations for the Budget presentation at her Finance Ministry office in Port of Spain.
"Maintaining employment levels and facilitating growth in the economy, that clearly has to be the priority," Nunez-Tesheira said.
The Central Bank's Summary Economic Indicators Bulletin up to June showed that in the first quarter of this year, unemployment in this country rose to five per cent from a record low of 3.9 per cent in the last quarter of 2008, due to continued job losses across the local labour market as a result of the impact of the global economic downturn.
The Government twice adjusted its expenditure profile downwards from its original $50 billion projection during this fiscal year, in response to an anticipated $5 billion revenue shortfall that resulted from the global economic downturn. As such, Cabinet twice lowered its oil and gas prices for the Budget and approved close to $5 billion in Budgetary cutbacks.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning had told the Parliament on January 14 that the Government intended to make further budgetary cut backs and issue Government bonds as a form of temporary deficit financing to make up for the anticipated $1.7 billion deficit.
Nunez-Tesheira said yesterday that the 2009/2010 Budget will be a continuation of Government's "prudent" management of the economy during this fiscal year, hinting at further cut backs in expenditure.
"What this budget will be doing will be consistent with what we have done," Nunez-Tesheira said.
As for calls from the COP and others for the Government to reduce its capital expenditure on infrastructural projects such as the high rise buildings now under construction in downtown Port of Spain, Nunez-Tesheira said: "It is not anything different from what we have indicated. They are free to express their opinions and I am glad to see that they are agreeing with the Government ... At the end of the day, I expect when the Budget is read they will be in high praise."
