Browne: THA’s budget request faces fiscal reality check

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER
AND DA­REECE PO­LO

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne says To­ba­go’s $4.12 bil­lion bud­get re­quest for fis­cal 2027 may be am­bi­tious, but warned the fi­nal al­lo­ca­tion will de­pend on the coun­try’s fis­cal con­straints and the Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s abil­i­ty to bal­ance com­pet­ing pri­or­i­ties.

Fol­low­ing the THA’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Browne told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that while To­ba­go can re­quest what it be­lieves is nec­es­sary, the re­al­i­ty is the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment is al­ready un­der pres­sure.

“I’m on­ly look­ing at the size of the bud­get rel­a­tive to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the dif­fi­cul­ties. I think he doesn’t have the cash to give them all that they want,” Browne said.

He said pol­i­tics may in­flu­ence dis­cus­sions, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en To­ba­go’s role in the cur­rent Par­lia­ment, but eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties will ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine the out­come.

“This is a mat­ter of, one, pol­i­tics on one side and po­lit­i­cal bar­gain­ing in terms of the num­ber of votes that they have in Par­lia­ment. And on the oth­er side, it has to do with the fi­nan­cial re­al­i­ties. As much as Mr Tan­coo has said that things are dif­fer­ent, the fi­nan­cial re­al­i­ty is, he is in ex­act­ly the same po­si­tion that Mr Im­bert was. So, the on­ly is­sue here is how much are you go­ing to pay? Not if he can meet all of the de­mands, he can’t,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Browne, the Gov­ern­ment is al­ready grap­pling with un­met com­mit­ments and grow­ing pres­sure to de­liv­er on promis­es made to the pub­lic.

Browne said cuts may be nec­es­sary as Gov­ern­ment works to bal­ance spend­ing pri­or­i­ties.

Asked whether re­duced fund­ing for To­ba­go could al­ter the po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, Browne said that while dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions lie ahead, man­ag­ing com­pet­ing de­mands is an un­avoid­able part of pub­lic fi­nance.

And while ques­tions emerge over whether this record-break­ing bud­get re­quest could hurt the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Shane Mo­hammed ex­pressed his view that this is an un­like­ly out­come.

He said, “I don’t think it’s a ‘if they don’t get it, it’s go­ing to cause con­tention’. But I do think, you have to re­mem­ber, that when you’re think­ing from a mon­ey per­spec­tive, there has to be, if we give you such and such, there needs to be a re­turn on the in­vest­ment, and that’s been a con­ver­sa­tion that we’re not hav­ing on­ly be­cause it’s a TPP/UNC in pow­er gov­ern­ment and THA re­la­tion­ship.”

Mo­hammed was al­so par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal of the THA’s de­ci­sion to al­lo­cate $10 mil­lion to­wards ad­vanc­ing To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my agen­da, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a Com­mis­sion on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Au­ton­o­my and a Self-gov­ern­ment Tran­si­tion Com­mis­sion. He ar­gued that the ex­pen­di­ture is dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy.

On the URP and CEPEP pro­grammes, which the THA hopes to con­tin­ue to the tune of $43.35 mil­lion, Mo­hammed praised the ini­tia­tive.

Un­like in Trinidad, where the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion dis­band­ed the projects, claim­ing abuse and cor­rup­tion, Mo­hammed said the To­ba­go fac­tion op­er­at­ed large­ly un­blem­ished.

How­ev­er, he rec­om­mend­ed that skills train­ing be in­clud­ed to en­cour­age em­ploy­ees to be­come in­de­pen­dent agri­cul­tur­al en­tre­pre­neurs and not just op­er­ate on mega farms.