THA seeks $4.12bn budget for fiscal 2027

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is seek­ing a bud­get al­lo­ca­tion of $4.12 bil­lion for fis­cal 2027, with Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my Petal-Ann Roberts say­ing the fund­ing will sup­port a shift to­wards re­sults-based gov­er­nance and long-term eco­nom­ic re­silience.

Pre­sent­ing the THA Bud­get this morn­ing, Roberts out­lined re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture of $3.03 bil­lion and de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme ex­pen­di­ture of $1.09 bil­lion.

She said the re­quest is based on a pro­ject­ed na­tion­al bud­get of $62.16 bil­lion and rep­re­sents a 6.6 per cent share of over­all Gov­ern­ment spend­ing.

“In nom­i­nal dol­lars and cents our re­quest amounts to on­ly six dol­lars and six­ty cents of every one hun­dred dol­lars of pro­ject­ed na­tion­al bud­getary ex­pen­di­tures,” Roberts said.

The largest share of re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture has been ear­marked for the Di­vi­sion of Health and Well­ness, which is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive $1.03 bil­lion. Oth­er ma­jor al­lo­ca­tions in­clude $519.6 mil­lion for the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Skills and In­no­va­tion, $343.99 mil­lion for the Di­vi­sion of Pub­lic In­fra­struc­ture and Trans­porta­tion, and $193.28 mil­lion for the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, An­tiq­ui­ties and Cre­ative In­dus­tries.

Among the key re­cur­rent pro­grammes iden­ti­fied in the bud­get are $750 mil­lion for the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, $50 mil­lion for the To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed, $45 mil­lion for the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme and $40 mil­lion for the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion Lim­it­ed.

Roberts al­so an­nounced a new pro­gramme for in­fra­struc­ture up­grades in ur­ban and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, which has been al­lo­cat­ed $91.9 mil­lion. The pro­gramme will con­tin­ue work pre­vi­ous­ly un­der­tak­en un­der un­em­ploy­ment re­lief ini­tia­tives.

The CEPEP pro­gramme has been al­lo­cat­ed $43.35 mil­lion and trans­ferred to the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, where Roberts said it will pro­vide labour sup­port for agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.

On the de­vel­op­ment side, the THA has pro­posed $508 mil­lion for eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture projects, $430.4 mil­lion for so­cial in­fra­struc­ture and $144.5 mil­lion for mul­ti-sec­toral and oth­er ser­vices.

Roberts said To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate $220.5 mil­lion in tax and non-tax rev­enues dur­ing fis­cal 2027, in­clud­ing $152.5 mil­lion from tax­es on in­come and prof­its and $59.9 mil­lion from tax­es on goods and ser­vices.

How­ev­er, she ar­gued that To­ba­go’s rev­enue col­lec­tion sys­tems do not ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect the lev­el of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land.

“Sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue streams gen­er­at­ed here in To­ba­go are col­lect­ed in Trinidad in vi­o­la­tion of Sec­tion 49 of the THA Act 40 of 1996,” Roberts said.

She main­tained that en­hanced leg­is­la­tion and com­ple­tion of the To­ba­go self-gov­ern­ment project re­main nec­es­sary to ad­dress the is­sue.

The Fi­nance Sec­re­tary al­so out­lined plans to pur­sue al­ter­na­tive fi­nanc­ing through part­ner­ships with in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­cies, in­clud­ing the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank, the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme and the World Bank.

She said the THA was ex­plor­ing pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships to sup­port hous­ing, dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and in­sti­tu­tion­al mod­erni­sa­tion projects, while al­so pur­su­ing cli­mate re­silience fund­ing for To­ba­go’s south-west­ern coast­line.

Roberts said the bud­get was craft­ed against a back­drop of glob­al eco­nom­ic, en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial un­cer­tain­ty and was de­signed to strength­en To­ba­go’s re­silience.

“This bud­get state­ment is ti­tled Re­sults-Based Gov­er­nance: A Path­way to Pros­per­i­ty,” she said.

She added that the THA’s spend­ing pro­pos­als align with the Strate­gic De­vel­op­ment Plan for To­ba­go 2025-2045 and the Blue­print 2026-2030.

“Our strate­gic aim is to de­cou­ple To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment from the his­tor­i­cal boom and bust cy­cles of the na­tion­al com­mod­i­ty par­a­digm, lay­ing the foun­da­tion for true eco­nom­ic self-re­liance and shared pros­per­i­ty as we move along our cho­sen path­ways to be­com­ing the great­est lit­tle is­land on the plan­et,” Roberts said.