PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Petal Ann Roberts said work on Ele­phant Tree Re­sort and Vil­las To­ba­go, Ta­pes­try Col­lec­tion by Hilton is pro­gress­ing.

Hilton had an­nounced the de­vel­op­ment of the re­sort in Rox­bor­ough last year, with plans to in­clude 40 guest rooms and 126 ful­ly fur­nished res­i­dences, in­clud­ing 88 three-bed­room units and 38 two-bed­room units.

Roberts gave an up­date on the project as well as oth­er pro­posed ho­tel de­vel­op­ments at the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion last week.

"The last ho­tel de­vel­op­ment, as far as I know, we have got­ten the ap­provals for the con­struc­tion, and we are just wait­ing," said Roberts, "As you know, it's not the gov­ern­ment (build­ing the ho­tel) it's the pri­vate sec­tor, and they re­quire ap­provals to move for­ward. We have Ele­phant Tree, which is ac­tu­al­ly un­der con­struc­tion. I don't know what per­cent­age, but that is on its way, and we are just wait­ing on the Mar­riott in the Pleas­ant Prospect, Mount Irv­ing area, for them to start."

She al­so gave word that the THA's re­quest­ed bud­get of $4.12 bil­lion bud­get for the 2026/2027 fis­cal year would hy­per fo­cus on the de­vel­op­ment of the is­land.

She said, "The idea is to build To­ba­go. We have a blue­print, which is our of­fi­cial medi­um-term plan­ning frame­work, and that is what we're ac­tu­al­ly us­ing. That's what the bud­get is based on. The medi­um-term plan to de­vel­op To­ba­go. And I'll give you some of the ar­eas that we're go­ing to fo­cus on in fis­cal 2027. It's ac­tu­al­ly, as I said, build­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty."

She con­tin­ued, "There are 10 fo­cus ar­eas. It's build­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty, sus­tain­able tourism, food se­cu­ri­ty and food sov­er­eign­ty.

One of the key things is build­ing an in­clu­sive so­ci­ety. We have ne­glect­ed the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled for a very long time, and there are per­sons who have skills, but be­cause they're not able to come for­ward. So, we want to build an in­clu­sive so­ci­ety."

Roberts al­so re­it­er­at­ed the THA would con­tin­ue to push for To­ba­go's au­ton­o­my as well as cli­mate re­silience.