Gov­ern­ment’s res­cue mis­sion to “keep peo­ple alive” amid the COVID-19 threat will be re­in­forced next week with the start of pay­out of In­come Tax re­turns to peo­ple owed $20,000 and less. VAT re­turn pay­ments will al­so be­gin for small and medi­um busi­ness­es owed $250,000 and un­der.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert deemed the plans part of Gov­ern­ment’s “res­cue mis­sion” as he spoke Wednes­day in Par­lia­ment on leg­is­la­tion to fa­cil­i­tate the pay­outs and re­con­fig­ure the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF).

The HSF is be­ing changed to al­low ac­cess to funds, rather than wait­ing a year as un­der pre­vi­ous law. Gov­ern­ment is sourc­ing US$1.1 bil­lion from the HSF for “res­cue” work. The re­con­fig­u­ra­tion will al­low any gov­ern­ment to ac­cess funds when a dis­as­ter area is de­clared, when a dan­ger­ous in­fec­tious dis­ease ex­ists and when there’s a like­li­hood of a huge oil rev­enue drop. T&T has two of those con­di­tions.

Im­bert said, “A cat­a­stroph­ic sit­u­a­tion faces us—we’ve been hit by the dou­ble-wham­my of nat­ur­al gas price re­duc­tion plus oil price fall; both half of what was bud­get­ed for. Since we’re large­ly a gas econ­o­my it’s tak­en a huge toll. With clo­sures caused by the COVID-19 virus, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and quar­an­tine—the re­sult will be cat­a­clysmic. So we had to change the way we with­draw from the fund.

“Our pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive is to keep peo­ple in jobs, give them salaries and as­sis­tance - to keep peo­ple alive!”

Gov­ern­ment’s plan in­cludes $1 bil­lion for so­cial sup­port plans, $1b for ac­cel­er­at­ing VAT re­turn pay­ments and $400 mil­lion to ac­com­mo­date in­creased tax re­funds. By the end of next week, in­come tax re­turns will be­gin for the 9,397 peo­ple owed $20,000 and less.

The cur­rent to­tal VAT re­funds owed is $6.2 bil­lion. Im­bert said out of 10,160 busi­ness­es owed, 10,088 are owed less than $10m and 72 busi­ness­es are owed $5 bil­lion.

“We de­cid­ed to help small and medi­um busi­ness­es, as they can’t help them­selves in times of cri­sis,” Im­bert said.

Pay­ment, be­gin­ning by the end of next week, cov­ers the 92 per cent of busi­ness­es owed $250,000 and less. Gov­ern­ment’s al­so pay­ing state con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers and is clear­ing bills owed to jan­i­to­r­i­al, se­cu­ri­ty and ba­sic sup­plies com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and med­ical equip­ment.

It will al­so take a week to es­tab­lish cri­te­ria for the pro­posed $1,500 salary grant (over the next three months) for the es­ti­mat­ed 80,000 peo­ple in bars, tourism, food in­dus­try, casi­nos and clubs like­ly to lose jobs im­me­di­ate­ly amid the COVID cri­sis.

Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment did not know what would hap­pen with the econ­o­my—since Chi­na, a large hy­dro­car­bon con­sumer, was hit by COVID. He didn’t know how long the cri­sis may last. The oil rev­enue loss will be sub­stan­tial, he added, “But it’s dif­fi­cult to say what it will be.”

“This is un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ry, brand new, a new world, like af­ter World War Three. We in T&T have to look af­ter our­selves ... this leg­is­la­tion’s es­sen­tial to do so.”