Budget reveals $15M data centre spend

SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shar­lene.ram­per­[email protected]

In fis­cal 2026, the Gov­ern­ment spent $15 mil­lion through the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (MPAAI) on the con­struc­tion and out­fit­ting of a Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre.

The fig­ures ap­pear in the Draft Es­ti­mates of De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme Ex­pen­di­ture 2027, re­leased by the Min­istry of Fi­nance on Oc­to­ber 12.

Un­der Head 31 (MPAAI), Project 077 is list­ed as “The es­tab­lish­ment of a Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre to strength­en the dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture”, with es­ti­mat­ed ex­pen­di­ture of $5 mil­lion in fis­cal 2026 and $10 mil­lion in fis­cal 2027.

Project 018, un­der the same Head, is list­ed as “Con­struc­tion and Out­fit­ting of a Tier 4 Da­ta Cen­tre”, with a re­vised es­ti­mat­ed ex­pen­di­ture of $15 mil­lion in fis­cal 2026. No al­lo­ca­tion is list­ed for fis­cal 2027.

The fig­ures come months af­ter the Gov­ern­ment signed two mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing (MoUs) with Amer­i­can com­pa­nies to con­struct two Tier 4 da­ta cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go: a 300-megawatt fa­cil­i­ty with Ernst & Young LLP and a 150-megawatt fa­cil­i­ty with Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings LLC.

They al­so fol­low a Guardian Me­dia re­port that a Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre was al­ready op­er­a­tional in Trinidad. In re­sponse, the MPAAI de­nied that a da­ta cen­tre ex­ist­ed, say­ing: “As re­flect­ed in Cab­i­net doc­u­ments ap­proved in 2022, the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment pro­posed a Tier IV Na­tion­al Da­ta Cen­tre at Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate to sup­port Gov­ern­ment dig­i­tal ser­vices, strength­en na­tion­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and re­duce the State’s re­liance on cost­ly ex­ter­nal da­ta host­ing arrange­ments.

“De­spite those plans, the project was nev­er com­plet­ed or op­er­a­tionalised by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

In his 2027 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo did not men­tion the two da­ta cen­tres cov­ered by the MoUs. He did, how­ev­er, speak about re­viv­ing the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal steel plant in Point Lisas. That project was al­so the sub­ject of an MoU signed on the same day as the da­ta cen­tre agree­ments.

“We re­vived the steel in­dus­try at Point Lisas: an as­set that once sym­bol­ised in­dus­tri­al de­cline is now at­tract­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars in in­vest­ment, cre­at­ing hun­dreds of jobs and po­si­tion­ing Point Lisas once again as a cen­tre of heavy in­dus­try and ad­vanced man­u­fac­tur­ing,” Tan­coo said.

He said Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion and its lo­cal sub­sidiary, Ibis Steel, were mak­ing an ini­tial in­vest­ment of US$250 mil­lion to be­gin re­fur­bish­ing the plant.

“An ad­di­tion­al US$750 mil­lion will fol­low. First pro­duc­tion is tar­get­ed for the end of 2027.

“This mile­stone project will po­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go as a key mem­ber of a west­ern crit­i­cal sup­ply chain, pro­vid­ing vana­di­um, a strate­gic met­al used in ad­vanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, aero­space and bat­tery tech­nolo­gies, open­ing the doors to de­vel­op a tech­no­log­i­cal in­dus­tri­al fron­tier for our econ­o­my,” Tan­coo said.

He said the plant would cre­ate 1,000 new per­ma­nent skilled jobs once op­er­a­tional.

Lat­er in his pre­sen­ta­tion, Tan­coo praised the Gov­ern­ment’s bi­lat­er­al trade agree­ments.

“Through the pow­er­house, our ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, we are en­gaged in bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion to­wards ex­pand­ing trade, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, food se­cu­ri­ty, steel man­u­fac­tur­ing among so many oth­ers.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment was “laser-fo­cused” on at­tract­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and that For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers would pro­vide more in­for­ma­tion on the agree­ments dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate.

In a news­pa­per in­ter­view af­ter the MoUs were signed, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the com­pa­nies had yet to sub­mit their fa­cil­i­ty de­signs for ap­proval and that ne­go­ti­a­tions with State en­ter­pris­es were still out­stand­ing. She said peo­ple sign­ing a pe­ti­tion against the da­ta cen­tre con­struc­tion over en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns should “wait on the com­pa­nies to pub­lish their pro­pos­als”.

Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed sent a se­ries of ques­tions to MPAAI Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith on Oc­to­ber 16. The ques­tions in­clud­ed the da­ta cen­tre’s lo­ca­tion, whether the ex­pen­di­ture was re­lat­ed to the fa­cil­i­ty pro­posed un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion or to the new MoUs, and whether a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance had been ob­tained.

Smith re­spond­ed to a fur­ther re­quest for com­ment on Oc­to­ber 17, say­ing he was prepar­ing for the bud­get de­bate and did not have time to re­spond. He asked to be giv­en more no­tice for fu­ture in­ter­view re­quests.

Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed sent fol­low-up in­ter­view re­quests on Oc­to­ber 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23.

On Oc­to­ber 21, Smith replied on What­sApp: “Hi thanks for reach­ing out. This is the Min­is­ter’s as­sis­tant and I will pass the mes­sage on. He’s en­gaged with SFC (Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee).”

Smith was sched­uled to ap­pear be­fore the SFC on Oc­to­ber 23.

A re­view of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty’s (EMA) pub­lic reg­is­ter found no record of Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance ap­pli­ca­tions or ex­emp­tions for ei­ther the pro­posed Ernst & Young or Hum­ming­bird AI da­ta cen­tre.

By con­trast, oth­er tech­nol­o­gy in­fra­struc­ture projects, in­clud­ing First Cit­i­zens Bank’s cor­po­rate da­ta cen­tre in Trinci­ty and eTecK’s Preysal In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, have sub­mit­ted ap­pli­ca­tions to the au­thor­i­ty and re­ceived statu­to­ry ap­provals.

Un­der lo­cal en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions, fa­cil­i­ties of this scale typ­i­cal­ly re­quire CEC ap­proval for ma­jor earth­works, high-volt­age pow­er in­fra­struc­ture and cool­ing sys­tems be­fore con­struc­tion.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­so al­lo­cat­ed sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in the 2027 bud­get.

Un­der the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP), the MPAAI was al­lo­cat­ed $71.3 mil­lion to con­tin­ue up­grad­ing the pub­lic ser­vice’s in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy in­fra­struc­ture through the Gov­ern­ment Digi­ti­sa­tion Pro­gramme.

The pro­gramme in­cludes the Na­tion­al Dig­i­tal Iden­ti­ty Pro­gramme (TTPass), the In­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty and Na­tion­al Reg­istries Pro­gramme (Gov­Link­TT), GoRTT Dis­trib­uted Cloud, and the GoRTT Mi­crosoft 365 Mi­gra­tion and Hy­brid Mod­erni­sa­tion.

The al­lo­ca­tion al­so funds the Dig­i­tal Cit­i­zens Ser­vices Pro­gramme, which in­cludes ex­pand­ed broad­band ser­vices for un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties, skills train­ing through the LearnTT plat­form, schol­ar­ships and up­grades to ac­cess cen­tres across the coun­try.

It al­so cov­ers the Smart and Ef­fi­cient Gov­ern­ment Pro­gramme, the T&T Fast Pay­ments Sys­tem, the In­te­grat­ed Ser­vice Cen­tre, gov­ern­ment busi­ness in­tel­li­gence and per­for­mance dash­boards, and Na­tion­al AI sec­tor pi­lots.

The PSIP al­so lists the Fu­ture Ready Na­tion project, which fo­cus­es on dig­i­tal skills train­ing and work­force de­vel­op­ment.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion will re­ceive $731.6 mil­lion to mod­ernise the learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment “through the in­te­gra­tion of ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies, up­grad­ing of phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture across all lev­els of ed­u­ca­tion, and the re­view and en­hance­ment of cur­ric­u­la”.

It will al­so re­ceive $115 mil­lion for its Dig­i­tal Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gramme, which aims to mod­ernise the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, im­prove dig­i­tal learn­ing out­comes and ex­pose stu­dents to new tech­nol­o­gy.

That al­lo­ca­tion in­cludes $100 mil­lion for lap­tops and ac­ces­sories for stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors, $10 mil­lion for broad­band and wire­less in­fra­struc­ture, and $5 mil­lion to ex­pand core serv­er in­fra­struc­ture and pro­cure a net­work-at­tached stor­age serv­er for the da­ta and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty plat­form.

A fur­ther $20 mil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed for the ac­qui­si­tion and in­stal­la­tion of an En­ter­prise Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Com­put­er Clus­ter at the min­istry’s head of­fice and the rein­tro­duc­tion of the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) as part of the SEA frame­work.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter will re­ceive $500,000 for the “in­sti­tu­tion­al strength­en­ing of TTT Lim­it­ed” and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an e-hub video-on-de­mand plat­form to meet grow­ing de­mand for on-de­mand and mo­bile-based me­dia.

The Min­istry of De­fence has been al­lo­cat­ed $5.6 mil­lion to con­tin­ue procur­ing hard­ware, ac­ces­sories and soft­ware for the De­fence Force, the TT Reg­i­ment, the Air Guard and the Coast Guard.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance is set to re­ceive $10 mil­lion to de­vel­op an In­te­grat­ed Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem. The PSIP says the project will mod­ernise and strength­en pub­lic fi­nan­cial man­age­ment by re­plac­ing equip­ment and im­prov­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty.

The min­istry will al­so re­ceive $45 mil­lion to con­tin­ue ICT ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing up­grad­ing in­fra­struc­ture at the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion, in­stalling and com­mis­sion­ing net­work in­fra­struc­ture at the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion, re­lo­cat­ing the Fi­nance and Ac­counts, Hu­man Re­source and Pub­lic Debt de­part­ments, and pur­chas­ing in­spec­tion scan­ners for the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

The Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment has been al­lo­cat­ed $1.8 mil­lion to con­tin­ue im­ple­ment­ing an elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment man­age­ment sys­tem.

The Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices has been al­lo­cat­ed $700,000 to con­tin­ue its In­te­grat­ed So­cial En­ter­prise Man­age­ment Sys­tem (E-pass) project. The fund­ing will sup­port in­te­gra­tion with the IdenTT plat­form and the de­vel­op­ment of two ap­pli­ca­tions to ex­change da­ta with the Im­mi­gra­tion and Li­cens­ing di­vi­sions.

The min­istry will al­so re­ceive $1 mil­lion to im­ple­ment an en­ter­prise pay­ment or­ches­tra­tion lay­er to mod­ernise cheque pay­ments, among oth­er things.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly will re­ceive $6.2 mil­lion for its com­put­er­i­sa­tion pro­gramme.