When he presents his first budget at 1.30 p.m today, Minister of Finance Winston Dookeran is expected to announce an increase in the minimum wage from the current $9 an hour.

Asked whether he was expecting the issue of the minimum wage to be resolved today, Labour Minister Errol McLeod yesterday said: “The minimum wage is expected to continue to be under review. What is going to happen tomorrow (today) no doubt is that of course some increase would be mentioned. I am not privileged to suggest the extent of that increase, but I know that it (the minimum wage) would be increased and it would continue to be reviewed, according to the legislation governing it.”

McLeod said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the 2010/2011 budget.

“I anticipate that the Minister of Finance was having difficulties given the height of the expectations and the reality of the level of resources that he has to share around. But I am leaving all of that for the Finance Minister to say. I am not speaking for him here,” the Labour Minister said.
Conceding that one of the key things Dookeran would have to do is get revenue to generate employment and reduce the need for the State to provide make-work jobs such as URP, McLeod said: “It is like a household. You have to manage with the resources available to you.”
McLeod, a former trade unionist, said Government would certainly like to satisfy labour and all other stakeholders in the national economy.
“What we cannot do this time, I look forward to us being able to do next time,” he said.

Minister of Planning, Economic and Social Restructuring and Gender Affairs, Mary King, whose ministry oversees the Public Sector Investment Programme for all the ministries, said today was critical for her ministry. She said her ministry had its own “going-forward plan” for the restructuring of the economy of Trinidad and Tobago, so that it would be less dependent on oil and gas and would have a new range of products in the next five to ten years.

“Though we have already started, tomorrow (today) puts us on board with that exercise,” she said.

She added that step one in the restructuring exercise was the establishment of the National Innovation System, which would involve going out and doing an international foresighting exercise encompassing major research and analysis on all the stakeholders.
“The end product is to bring us to new centres of excellence for research and development on new products. So for our ministry this is a very exciting year. We are really looking forward to getting it started and moving,” she said.

“So yes, tomorrow (budget day) would be day one of the activity,” she added. Asked whether the country would know whether Government would be proceeding with the smelter plant at La Brea, Energy Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan said: “I can’t say. I prefer not to pre-empt the Minister of Finance. Wait until you hear the Minister of Finance.”
Dookeran, a former Central Bank governor and planning minister who is considered more of an academic than most of the previous Finance Ministers, is expected to present an overview of the economy and to detail Government intentions and plans, as well as state where the revenues to generate economic activity and pay for Government social programmes would come from.

There are some things the country already knows about this budget, the first for the People’s Partnership Government. Dookeran has already indicated it will have a deficit running into billions. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has already said there would be no new taxes. She has also stated that Government would be forgoing collection of the land and building taxes this year.

As has been the custom in all administrations, the Cabinet is expected to meet before the budget presentation to approve the fiscal package in the 2010/2011 Appropriation Bill.