00:00During the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce's annual business meeting
00:04at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Prime Minister Stuart Young delivered what could be considered
00:09a political sales pitch less than a month before the 2025 general election set for April
00:1628th.
00:18We in Trinidad and Tobago need the stability.
00:22The business sector understands the stability.
00:25But despite what difficulties there may be, you know that there is not going to be a devaluation
00:34of the dollar.
00:36You know that the deficit hole is not going to grow in a manner that is unsustainable.
00:42It was in November of last year that the then Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley, told the
00:47Parliament that what he called the pressure on the government to devalue the currency
00:52is coming from people who have foreign exchange and that the government will not bow to special
00:59interest pressure.
01:00The new Public Utilities Minister, Carl Inbert, also spoke about the issue at the TNT Chambers
01:06event.
01:07He said he was invited when he was the Finance Minister.
01:11Now you would have heard Prime Minister Young make the point that over the last nine and
01:15a half years we have kept the value of the Trinidad and Tobago dollar fairly steady with
01:22no devaluation and I can tell you that in 2025 our revenues have been helped by the
01:31tax amnesty that has earned us over $2 billion that we did not plan for.
01:37Minister Inbert said Trinidad and Tobago has been getting what he called a better than
01:41expected price for its natural gas.
01:43Henry Hub is now $4 per MMBTU and if you go all the way back one year ago to March 2024,
01:52you will see that the price of natural gas, Henry Hub price, was $1.66.
01:59So we are enjoying far better prices for natural gas and it is helping us to do some things
02:09that we could not do before, for example, the VAT refunds.
02:12Minister Inbert also said the new formula for Trinidad and Tobago's natural gas is a
02:16mixture of a number of prices.
02:19When you put them all together, our gas price that we are getting now is actually in excess
02:26of $5 per MMBTU.
02:29The budget forecast was $3.75.
02:33So things are not as bad as people make them out to be.
02:37Minister Inbert said there are still challenges with natural gas production but the gas price
02:41is quote, quite good, end quote.
02:45Jule Brown, TV6 News.
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