Manning: THA entitled to seek $4.12B funding

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

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For­mer min­is­ter in the min­istry of fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is en­ti­tled to seek what­ev­er lev­el of fund­ing it be­lieves is nec­es­sary to meet the needs of To­bag­o­ni­ans.

How­ev­er, he stressed that any de­ci­sion on the fi­nal al­lo­ca­tion must take in­to ac­count the coun­try’s broad­er fis­cal po­si­tion and com­pet­ing de­mands on the na­tion­al bud­get.

THA is seek­ing a record $4.12 bil­lion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for fis­cal 2027. This is $400 mil­lion more than what the as­sem­bly asked for last year and rep­re­sents 6.6 per cent of the pro­ject­ed na­tion­al bud­get.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Man­ning said the THA al­lo­ca­tion is not the on­ly source of Gov­ern­ment spend­ing di­rect­ed to­wards To­ba­go, as min­istries al­so fund projects and pro­grammes on the is­land through their own bud­gets.

“At the end of the day, it’s a de­ci­sion to be made by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, and I hope that he con­sid­ers all of those fac­tors when mak­ing that fi­nal de­ci­sion,” he stat­ed.

Man­ning main­tained that al­lo­ca­tions grant­ed to To­ba­go in re­cent years re­flect­ed the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions fac­ing the coun­try at the time, par­tic­u­lar­ly as Trinidad and To­ba­go emerged from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and sought to re­build eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

He re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that pre­vi­ous fund­ing had not pro­duced re­sults, ar­gu­ing that a num­ber of projects were com­plet­ed across To­ba­go over the years.

“You can list out all the fire sta­tions and sport­ing com­plex­es and al­so road paving and so on that took place in To­ba­go,” he added.

Mean­while, TNT Seabridge Truck­ers Ltd pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Damien Ed­wards said the fo­cus should now be on how the pro­posed fund­ing will be dis­trib­uted and whether the spend­ing trans­lates in­to tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits for To­ba­go’s econ­o­my.

He not­ed that the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion pro­vid­ed a broad overview and that stake­hold­ers would be look­ing close­ly at the up­com­ing de­bate to un­der­stand where the mon­ey is ex­pect­ed to go.

“We look now for the de­bate to see where these monies are go­ing to be al­lo­cat­ed and how it is go­ing to bear fruit in fis­cal 2027,” Ed­wards said.

From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, he point­ed to signs of on­go­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land, par­tic­u­lar­ly in con­struc­tion and tourism-re­lat­ed sec­tors.

He cit­ed res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion, vil­la de­vel­op­ments and in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty in the short-term rental mar­ket as in­di­ca­tors that in­vest­ment con­tin­ues to take place across To­ba­go.

On the is­sue of in­ter-is­land trade and trans­porta­tion, Ed­wards said stake­hold­ers re­main fo­cused on en­sur­ing the sea bridge con­tin­ues to op­er­ate ef­fi­cient­ly and that com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­mains open be­tween all par­ties in­volved.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing oc­ca­sion­al op­er­a­tional chal­lenges, Ed­wards main­tained that the ser­vice con­tin­ues to func­tion.

The pro­posed $4.12 bil­lion re­quest will now form part of dis­cus­sions be­tween the THA and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment ahead of the prepa­ra­tion of the fis­cal 2027 na­tion­al bud­get, where the fi­nal al­lo­ca­tion to To­ba­go will ul­ti­mate­ly be de­ter­mined.

At­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to ob­tain a com­ment from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Kennedy Swarats­ingh were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.