THA sets budget date

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will make its bud­get re­quest for fis­cal 2027 on June 22.

Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts an­nounced the date yes­ter­day, adding that the bud­get de­bate will be held on June 25.

To­ba­go re­ceived $2.96 bil­lion in the 2025/2026 na­tion­al bud­get last Oc­to­ber.

Roberts said con­sul­ta­tion among var­i­ous stake­hold­ers be­gan on April 20 and con­clud­ed on Tues­day.

She said dis­cus­sions were held with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo last month, but she did not re­quest a fig­ure.

“The min­is­ter did in­di­cate his con­cerns in terms of what was hap­pen­ing in the econ­o­my,” she said.

Oth­er top­ics dis­cussed in­clud­ed the ex­pan­sion of the THA in prepa­ra­tion for con­sti­tu­tion­al au­ton­o­my, the roll­out of a four-year plan for the is­land, the mid-year re­view, in­clud­ing $74 mil­lion for ar­rears for teach­ers and an in­crease in salaries, fund­ing for the new Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Mean­while, Roberts re­vealed the THA has trans­ferred $164 mil­lion from re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­tures to the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme.

How­ev­er, she made it clear that salaries would be un­af­fect­ed, ex­plain­ing that the ar­eas where cut­backs were made in­clud­ed of­fi­cial for­eign trav­el and of­fice sta­tionery.