PM on UNC government's first budget – 'All about fairness and equality'

PRIME MINISTER Kamla Persad-Bissessar said her UNC government's first budget was all about fairness and equality as she addressed reporters at the Red House rotunda after the 2025-2026 fiscal package was delivered by Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo on October 13.

"Fairness requires that everyone plays their part," she asserted.

The PM then justified a 0.25 per cent levy on the assets of banks and insurance companies, plus the registering of proprietors to pay a landlord business surcharge on undeclared properties they rent out for profit.

Making it clear the latter was not a property tax, she said it was designed to rebalance the rental sector and give protection to landlords and tenants. She made the point that this was not a tax on people's own homes.

"This is not a tax budget. It is an accountability budget." The landlord business surcharge will contribute to the public coffers, she added.

Persad-Bissessar said cutting by a dollar per litre in the price of super gasoline, meant overall, that $500,000 per year would remain in consumers' pockets. She also boasted that the removal of VAT from inputs into the agricultural sector would now empower farmers.

Contrasting the $3 billion budget deficit with the former PNM government's deficits of $16-$18 billion, over ten years, she said, "It is not magic. We just worked very hard. They (PNM) just do not know how to manage."

Persad-Bissessar said this was not a budget to make the rich get richer, but rather is a budget of fairness and balance.

The PM said a three per cent hike in the size of contributions to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) would increase the total sum collected by the National Insurance Board (NIB) by 23 per cent per year. She said an employer pays two-thirds of each worker's NIS contribution, while a workers pays only one-third.

Persad-Bissessar said the lowest level of earner – known as class I – who is earning $1,407 per month will pay an extra $11.70 per month or $2.70 per week.

At the top class VI, for an employee who earns $13,000 per month, the new levels will see the employee paying an extra $136 per month, while on his behalf, his employer pays $272 per month.

The PM advised people to have private pensions – which would not earn tax – unlike government pensions. "I suggest you do it."

"We found the NIS in a state of collapse. The minister made it very clear that if we did not fix this problem now, in a few years time there would be no money left to pay any pensions, any injury benefits, maternity benefits. There would be NONE!"

Persad-Bissessar lauded Tancoo's allocation for the Tobago House of Assembly(THA). She listed the THA's development plan as being $2.96 billion, worth five per cent of the national budget.

She said Tobago will also get $763 million via various government ministries. The total allocation to Tobago, she calculated, was $3.7 billion or 6.3 per cent of the national budget.

Replying to a reporter's question, she said she has identified 8,000 vacancies in the public sector, as she held out the offer of "better jobs."