Budget Day is September 7.

Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira will present the Government’s revenue and expenditure fiscal package for 2009/2010 next Monday in the House of Representatives at the Red House, Port of Spain.

The country’s economic experts are already hoping for a budget that will focus on producing more food for the population at lower prices and more jobs for Trinidadians and Tobagonians.

Nunez-Tesheira said yesterday that she will deliver the national budget from 1.30 p.m. on Monday following the reopening of Parliament this Friday. It will be her second presentation, following her delivery last year of a $49.4 billion budget.

She was speaking yesterday during the 47th annual Independence Day parade in Port of Spain.

Nunez-Tesheira said Government had managed the economy well, particularly in light of the global financial meltdown.

Going forward, the upcoming budget will also factor in economic challenges around the world and there will be some scaling back in the fiscal package, she said. She admitted the budget would end in a deficit, but that Government would manage whatever deficit arises and that the budget would be ’conservative’.

Next week’s budget comes amid one of the most challenging business cycles in Trinidad and Tobago’s financial history.

Unemployment is easily above five per cent and rising, and the country faces negative GDP growth this year, as well as a continuing decline in individual and corporate credit.

American Chamber of Commerce president Eugene Tiah said yesterday that notwithstanding the prospects of a deficit budget, there was still a need to stimulate the economy to avoid further declines in employment. He told the Express by phone that manufacturers had been clamouring for a stimulus package for some time.

’We can’t argue with the need to spend money for a stimulus package, but it can’t be make-work packages. Spending has to be structured to make the country more competitive,’ Tiah said.

He said agriculture was a critical sector and while the latest economic data had shown a drop in inflation, he said there was still the need to stimulate agriculture production. He hoped that Government would continue to develop its mega farm projects. Tiah said the energy sector was also challenged and businesspeople were not seeing as much activity in exploration and production upstream projects. Companies are still being careful about how they spend and there is the need to boost the downstream energy sector as well, he added.

Tourism is another area that should be given attention, as well as an overall emphasis on productivity, including the need to ease traffic and improve services.

Gregory Aboud, president of the Downtown Owners and Merchants Association, said he hopes for a smaller budget next week.

’We are hoping for restraint in the total volume of the budget, in that this budget should be smaller. We continue to feel there should be a shifting of emphasis from several of the various projects that have been mentioned, particularly industrial and other construction projects, and emphasis should be placed on construction of bridges, overpasses, highways, access roads to agriculture lands and drainage,’ Aboud said during a phone interview yesterday.

Economist Indera Sagewan-Alli also wants emphasis on the budget to be placed on food and jobs.

’I believe we will not see a departure from the last set of budgets and it will be financed by borrowing and there will be a continued commitment to mega projects and there will be no cuts in allocations to programmes like the URP,’ she told the Express.

’But given the economic environment, what should happen is that any big projects that would generate revenue only in the long term should be put off for now and the Government should focus on a strategy to stimulate the private sector.’

This should be done particularly to stimulate the agricultural sector, given that it developed by 27 per cent and achieved a jump in employment over the past few fiscal quarters, she said.

Sagewan-Alli said there should also be a focus on developing the export market, agriculture and food production, as well as partnerships between the State and the private sector to provide more jobs.

Next week’s budget is expected to be pegged on an oil price of around US$60. International crude prices have hovered above the US$70 price for the past several months while natural gas-the country’s main revenue earner- recently sank to below US$2 per thousand cubic feet. - See page 10