Gail Alexan­der

Three weeks af­ter the 2013 bud­get was pre­sent­ed, the Works Min­istry is seek­ing an ex­tra $2.7 bil­lion to do in­fra­struc­tur­al work-$1 bil­lion of which will be bor­rowed from lo­cal banks, says Works Min­is­ter Em­manuel George. Asked if the ex­tra fund­ing would in­crease the $7 bil­lion deficit of the 2013 bud­get, George said it would in­crease Gov­ern­ment's debt to GDP ra­tio "but it will be spread over the long term."

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, George said the min­istry's 2013 bud­get al­lo­ca­tion was $749 mil­lion. Of that, he said, $580 mil­lion al­ready was spo­ken for with work in the East-West Cor­ri­dor and oth­er projects and oth­er sums for work on Diego Mar­tin high­way ex­ten­sions, bridges, land­slips and oth­er projects, in­clud­ing a $2 mil­lion re­fur­bish­ment at Mille Fleurs.

He said vis­its to con­stituen­cies in Princes Town, To­co, Moru­ga, Ca­roni Cen­tral, Cu­mu­to, Pointe-a-Pierre and oth­er ar­eas showed much work was need­ed on the lo­cal road net­work in Trinidad and on col­lapsed and col­laps­ing bridges and to tend to land­slips.

He said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter could not give all the funds that were re­quired, ow­ing to rev­enue con­straints, so the min­istry had ap­proached Cab­i­net on Sep­tem­ber 27 for an ad­di­tion­al $2.7 bil­lion to do the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­tur­al work over 2013 to 2015 to cater to the de­mands of the pub­lic.

George said Cab­i­net ap­proved the ini­tia­tive yes­ter­day. He said the min­istry would seek $1 bil­lion through bor­row­ing for 2013 and re­quest­ed $850 mil­lion in each of the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions of 2014 and 2015. He said over­tures would be made to the lo­cal bank­ing sec­tor short­ly to bor­row the $1 bil­lion.