THA seeks record $4.12B from Central Govt

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is seek­ing a record $4.12 bil­lion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for fis­cal 2027.

Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts yes­ter­day un­veiled the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s medi­um-term blue­print in her Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, promis­ing re­sults-based gov­er­nance to put the is­land on the path­way to pros­per­i­ty.

The re­quest­ed fig­ure is $400 mil­lion more than what the as­sem­bly asked for last year, and rep­re­sents 6.6 per cent of the pro­ject­ed na­tion­al bud­get.

The as­sem­bly was al­lo­cat­ed $2.99 bil­lion for fis­cal 2026, while Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced $783 mil­lion to To­ba­go via var­i­ous Gov­ern­ment min­istries.

Roberts’ two-hour-long pre­sen­ta­tion fo­cused on ten pil­lars, in­clud­ing au­ton­o­my, tourism, food se­cu­ri­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, cli­mate re­silience and in­clu­siv­i­ty.

The sec­re­tary not­ed that $3.03 bil­lion will go to­wards re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, while $1.09 bil­lion will im­prove To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment.

She al­so an­nounced a re­struc­tur­ing of the Cepep pro­gramme, which moves from the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment to the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty.

The pro­gramme will re­ceive $43.35 mil­lion with Cepep work­ers now em­ployed on mega farms.

The ini­tia­tive is ex­pect­ed to dou­ble agri­cul­tur­al out­put, which con­tributes just one per cent to To­ba­go’s Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ac­knowl­edged the lim­i­ta­tions in this sec­tor, but said a re­al­is­tic goal must be set as To­ba­go slow­ly moves to food re­silience.

“It is a step in the right di­rec­tion,” he said, adding that glob­al chal­lenges are af­fect­ing food se­cu­ri­ty for na­tions around the world.

The Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) has al­so been re­struc­tured but con­tin­ues as the Pro­gramme for In­fra­struc­ture Up­grade in Ur­ban and Rur­al Com­mu­ni­ties.

An in­te­gral el­e­ment in the THA achiev­ing its ob­jec­tives is au­ton­o­my, Roberts said, adding that an iron­clad fis­cal in­de­pen­dence is es­sen­tial.

She re­vealed the as­sem­bly col­lect­ed $220 mil­lion in rev­enue last fis­cal year, but ar­gued that this fig­ure does not rep­re­sent all the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by the is­land.

“We are ac­tive­ly work­ing to en­sure that the THA has a sta­ble, pre­dictable rev­enue source from tax­es on re­source ex­trac­tion with­in our pro­posed Ex­clu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone (EEZ), along with a trans­par­ent mech­a­nism to re­tain tax­es cur­rent­ly levied by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and col­lect­ed in To­ba­go.”

She said a “fair rev­enue-shar­ing mech­a­nism” is be­ing ag­gres­sive­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed.

To ad­vance the au­ton­o­my agen­da, Roberts said the THA will set up the To­ba­go Com­mis­sion on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Au­ton­o­my to re­view cur­rent gov­er­nance arrange­ments and rec­om­mend struc­tur­al en­hance­ments. The To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment Tran­si­tion Com­mis­sion will al­so be con­sti­tut­ed to de­sign a blue­print out­lin­ing the op­er­a­tional process­es re­quired to tran­si­tion from the cur­rent THA frame­work.

The THA has al­lo­cat­ed $10 mil­lion to achieve this.

Roberts said the THA will be repli­cat­ing Cas­tara’s com­mu­ni­ty-ori­ent­ed tourism mod­el in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

The as­sem­bly is al­so keen to see 500 four-and five-star ho­tel rooms on the is­land by 2030 as it an­tic­i­pates an in­flux of vis­i­tors.

She said the Mar­riott de­vel­op­ment at Rocky Point will help this thrust with 200 rooms part of that project.

She said the THA will press ahead with the trans­for­ma­tion of the Store Bay Beach Fa­cil­i­ty, which in­cludes turn­ing the pop­u­lar bathing area in­to a beach club with pools and restau­rants.

Roberts added that an eco-con­scious ap­proach will be adopt­ed with the in­ten­tion of hav­ing 25 per cent of all sus­tain­able tourism com­mu­ni­ties green-key cer­ti­fied by 2030.

The THA will be en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to go green as well with the in­stal­la­tion of sev­en elec­tric-ve­hi­cle charg­ing ports across the is­land.

In ad­di­tion, the THA will be re­plac­ing its en­tire fleet with hy­brid and elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

Roberts al­so out­lined a plan to pro­tect the coastal as­sets through the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean-fund­ed In­te­grat­ed Coastal Zone Man­age­ment Pro­gramme.

“The im­me­di­ate ap­proach ad­dress­es shore­line in­sta­bil­i­ty from Pi­geon Point to Crown Point and from Grange to Ply­mouth. We al­so aim to build ap­prox­i­mate­ly one kilo­me­tre of coastal de­fence struc­tures to pro­tect crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture along Mil­ford Road, Rox­bor­ough, Kendall and Good­wood.”

The sec­re­tary said $431.5 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to­wards a num­ber of in­fra­struc­ture projects for the fis­cal year, in­clud­ing the Rox­bor­ough/Bloody Bay re­tain­ing wall; the Friend­ship Es­tate De­vel­op­ment Project; the Scar­bor­ough re­de­vel­op­ment project; roads and in­fra­struc­ture up­grades; and the Pro­gramme for In­fra­struc­tur­al Up­grade in Ur­ban and Rur­al Com­mu­ni­ties, for­mer­ly known as URP.

In ad­di­tion, Roberts as­sured the pub­lic that the ad­min­is­tra­tion will work to pro­vide a bet­ter life for all cit­i­zens.

She said the dis­abled have not been for­got­ten and will be in­clud­ed in all as­pects of so­ci­ety.

Each di­vi­sion and spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­ny has been man­dat­ed to em­ploy at least two dif­fer­ent­ly abled peo­ple.

In ad­di­tion, the THA will be­gin con­struc­tion of the To­ba­go Cam­pus for Spe­cial Needs stu­dents at Sig­nal Hill.

The To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce gave the bud­get a favourable grade, but said its suc­cess will be hinged on how quick­ly the pro­grammes are im­ple­ment­ed.

“The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty wel­comes the pre­sen­ta­tion and recog­nis­es the ef­forts by the as­sem­bly to stim­u­late the econ­o­my and sup­port To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­men­tal agen­da,” Cham­ber head Cur­tis Williams said.

“How­ev­er, the true mea­sure will be the im­ple­men­ta­tion and speed in which the projects and pro­grammes are de­liv­ered.”

Williams said he is look­ing for­ward to the bud­get de­bate on Thurs­day to hear the de­tails of the var­i­ous ini­tia­tives.

He hailed the com­mu­ni­ty-tourism ap­proach, as well as the pro­mo­tion of fes­ti­val and event tourism, which he said would en­hance To­ba­go’s tourism prod­uct. Williams said the cham­ber is ready to part­ner with the THA to achieve its goals.

He re­mind­ed the THA, how­ev­er, that time­ly pay­ments to ser­vice providers are crit­i­cal to en­sur­ing cash flow in the econ­o­my and keep­ing busi­ness­es afloat.

How­ev­er, for­mer cham­ber chair Di­anne Hadad says more de­tails are need­ed for the THA to ad­e­quate­ly jus­ti­fy the al­lo­ca­tion of an es­ti­mat­ed $1.09 bil­lion to­wards de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme ex­pen­di­ture.

Hadad not­ed that not enough in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed to sup­port such a size­able al­lo­ca­tion, ar­gu­ing that such a sub­stan­tial sum must be re­quest­ed with sound rea­son­ing and clear ob­jec­tives in mind.

Hadad said the ar­eas Roberts cov­ered - eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture projects, so­cial in­fra­struc­ture and mul­ti-sec­toral and oth­er ser­vices - were too broad.

“All three are vague, they give no clar­i­ty as to how the coun­try’s mon­ey will be spent and I think that they owe it to the peo­ple to give de­tails on what they want a bil­lion dol­lars for. I ab­solute­ly don’t agree with those gen­er­al terms.”

She ar­gued that sev­er­al fea­tures of To­ba­go’s in­fra­struc­ture and es­sen­tial ser­vices, in­clud­ing its port, air­port and pro­tec­tive ser­vices, were al­ready man­aged and fund­ed by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. She al­so ques­tioned what was go­ing to be in­tro­duced to stim­u­late pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment.

“The THA clear­ly in­tends to con­tin­ue be­ing the lead em­ploy­er on the is­land and there­fore it rais­es the ques­tion about the long-stand­ing de­vel­op­ment of the is­land to cre­ate bet­ter pri­vate sec­tor and busi­ness,” she said.

“How­ev­er, it can­not hap­pen in an iso­lat­ed place; it must hap­pen where you have a tran­si­tion from gov­ern­ment on­to pri­vati­sa­tion or de­vel­op­ments ... so I want to imag­ine the bil­lion dol­lars in de­vel­op­ment will be need­ed, but the big ques­tion is what is the de­vel­op­ment plan? What are we de­vel­op­ing and what is the THA go­ing to be do­ing with $1 bil­lion for de­vel­op­ment?”