The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has met to repri­ori­tise its projects fol­low­ing a sev­en per cent de­crease in its par­lia­men­tary al­lo­ca­tion for 2016.

Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment As­sem­bly­man Joel Jack said yes­ter­day that the THA's over­all al­lo­ca­tion will be re­duced by $192.416 mil­lion to $2.556 bil­lion due to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's di­rec­tive to cut al­lo­ca­tions to all gov­ern­ment min­istries and the THA.

Jack said the THA's projects and ac­tiv­i­ties are be­ing re­viewed, "which could re­sult in the post­pone­ment of projects pend­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of fund­ing."

He said he was not en­tire­ly sur­prised by Dr Row­ley's re­cent state­ment on the coun­try's eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion and the ad­just­ments re­quired.

"We in To­ba­go are not obliv­i­ous to what is re­quired from all of us in these chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic times and we are pre­pared to do our part in help­ing our coun­try re­spond and treat with our cur­rent eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances," he said.

Jack said the THA will lead the way by re­duc­ing ex­pen­di­ture and en­forc­ing greater ex­pen­di­ture con­trols. It will al­so take steps to en­hance rev­enue while con­tin­u­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts. The THA will al­so stim­u­late the con­struc­tion sec­tor, strength­en its eco­nom­ic man­age­ment and es­tab­lish a To­ba­go Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

To com­ple­ment the ex­pen­di­ture re­duc­tions, Jack said, the THA will in­ten­si­fy its ef­forts to up­grade its ac­count­ing sys­tems. This mea­sure, to­geth­er with the move to give the chief ad­min­is­tra­tor au­thor­i­ty to is­sue an ex­ec­u­tive or­der to im­prove and stream­line the pro­cure­ment process­es across the THA, will help pro­vide greater val­ue for mon­ey.

The THA will al­so ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of im­ple­ment­ing user fees for some of the is­land's tourist at­trac­tions, start­ing at Fort King George.

Jack said the tourism sec­tor in To­ba­go has a crit­i­cal role to play in any na­tion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port to im­prove the qual­i­ty of the tourism prod­uct and to boost ar­rivals in To­ba­go. An ac­cel­er­at­ed hous­ing pro­gramme will al­so stim­u­late the con­struc­tion and oth­er sec­tors.

He added that the THA will min­imise the im­pact of rev­enue cuts on em­ploy­ment, and con­tin­ue to sup­port so­cial pro­grammes for the most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens.

He re­it­er­at­ed the im­por­tance of To­bag­o­ni­ans con­tribut­ing to the is­land's pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by pro­vid­ing a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.

"All of us should be pre­pared to point out and pre­vent wrong­do­ing wher­ev­er it oc­curs; all of us must col­lab­o­rate in nur­tur­ing that en­vi­ron­ment in which pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and 'de­liv­ery with in­tegri­ty' gov­ern our de­ci­sions and our ac­tions," Jack said.