Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Joel Jack is part of the lo­cal del­e­ga­tion ac­com­pa­ny­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert on an in­ter­na­tion­al mul­ti-city vis­it to raise funds to fi­nance Gov­ern­ment's spend­ing for fis­cal 2016.

Jack, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment, is rep­re­sent­ing To­ba­go's in­ter­est. The team left yes­ter­day.

The Fi­nance Sec­re­tary said apart from the tech­ni­cal as­pects of the meet­ings and pre­sen­ta­tions he would al­so as­sist in mar­ket­ing T&T as a vi­able in­vest­ment des­ti­na­tion to in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors.

He said the mis­sion was a crit­i­cal com­po­nent for en­cour­ag­ing wide in­vest­ment and in­vestor par­tic­i­pa­tion in the bond sales.

Thus far, he added, the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready raised $3 bil­lion through bond sales on the lo­cal mar­ket and that ini­tia­tive would fur­ther serve to fi­nance ex­pen­di­ture go­ing in­to 2017.

He said de­spite the eco­nom­ic is­sues raised as a re­sult of de­clin­ing en­er­gy prices and glob­al un­cer­tain­i­ty "we are work­ing to se­cure the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion. I am con­fi­dent that with the team as­sem­bled, we will achieve our tar­gets."

The mis­sion is tar­get­ed to raise US$1 bil­lion through the sale of ten to 12-year in­ter­na­tion­al bonds to fi­nance the fis­cal bud­get 2016.

Jack will ac­com­pa­ny the team which will lead the Los An­ge­les and New York legs of the mis­sion. In or­der to ex­pe­dite the process, an­oth­er ex­pert team will be tar­get­ing in­vestors in Boston and Lon­don.

Pre­sen­ta­tions will be made to pre­mier in­ter­na­tion­al banks and in­vestors.