With­in the Bud­get State­ment for Fis­cal 2024, as in the ma­jor­i­ty of bud­get state­ments of past fis­cal years, there is an es­say on To­ba­go. It is an es­say whose con­tent is not ap­pre­cia­bly dif­fer­ent from year to year, ex­cept in the size of the al­lo­ca­tions for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, as well as for de­vel­op­ment projects to be un­der­tak­en by the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment. So it is a pre­dictable state­ment, even in the fact that the fig­ures go up rather than down.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter re­views the THA-pro­posed Bud­get State­ment, varies fig­ures in it based large­ly on a le­gal scale (the low­est point of which his judge­ment usu­al­ly tar­gets), and in­cor­po­rates the ad­just­ed to­tals in his Na­tion­al Bud­get, along with al­lo­ca­tions to branch­es of var­i­ous min­istries and State agen­cies op­er­at­ing on the is­land.

So in­cum­bent Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert came up with the fol­low­ing “To­ba­go al­lo­ca­tion for Fis­cal 2024”:

To­tal: $2.585 bil­lion

Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture: $2.298 bil­lion

De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme: $260 mil­lion

URP: $18 mil­lion

Cepep: $9.2 mil­lion.

The to­tal ex­pen­di­ture for the coun­try was giv­en as $59.209 bil­lion. So if we were to cal­cu­late the to­tal To­ba­go al­lo­ca­tion as a per­cent­age of that amount, we would get 4.36 per cent, which is at the low­er end of the scale 4.03-6.9. Which has been a pre­dictable per cent for umpteen years.

The min­is­ter tells us that the To­ba­go al­lo­ca­tion rep­re­sents an in­crease of $64.2 mil­lion over the al­lo­ca­tion of $2.521 bil­lion in fis­cal 2023. It is clear that that in­crease has gone to re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and may even have been par­tial­ly sliced from the de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tion since the lat­ter has been slashed from the pal­try $300 mil­lion to the pal­tri­er $260 mil­lion.

Min­is­ter Im­bert is not about to act like the PNM plat­form speak­ers dur­ing the last THA elec­tions who promised to give the THA 6.8 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get if the elec­torate would vote them back in­to pow­er.

Cling­ing to the PNM’s 4.03 (or there­abouts), Im­bert’s es­say al­lo­cates $678.5 “to un­der­take and ex­e­cute ma­jor projects in To­ba­go in keep­ing with their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty un­der the Sixth Sched­ule of the THA Act of 1996”. Three of these projects are the Crown Point air­port ter­mi­nal, the de­silt­ing of the Hills­bor­ough Dam, and the up­grad­ing of the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um. The es­say us­es the law to jus­ti­fy its ap­proach, but it is still an open ques­tion whether not giv­ing the THA these projects is not vi­o­lat­ing the spir­it of au­ton­o­my.

The es­say tells us that Im­bert has re­viewed the Fis­cal 2024 Bud­get State­ment pre­sent­ed to him by the THA and, as a re­sult, can en­dorse in prin­ci­ple the pol­i­cy pre­scrip­tions out­lined in that Bud­get State­ment. He be­lieves that “once prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed, this pol­i­cy agen­da, with its strate­gic in­ter­ven­tions and cap­i­tal works will ad­vance the so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go”.

In en­dors­ing the THA’s pol­i­cy agen­da, Im­bert is be­ing more than gen­er­ous. I am as­sum­ing that he has been ad­vised by his tech­nocrats in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and in­ter­na­tion­al ad­vis­ers and that, there­fore, he is per­suad­ed that the pol­i­cy agen­da has some mer­it. In­deed, he takes the time to list the 17 pil­lars that the THA in­formed him their 2024 Bud­get pro­pos­als are based on, and he de­clares that he ex­pects that ‘the broad eco­nom­ic and macro­eco­nom­ic per­for­mance achieved in Trinidad will now as­sist in im­prov­ing the econ­o­my in To­ba­go. That per­for­mance, he tells us, con­sists of ‘our ro­bust gross do­mes­tic prod­uct’, ‘el­e­vat­ed lev­els of em­ploy­ment’, and ‘a sta­ble and low lev­els of in­fla­tion’.

The min­is­ter is ex­press­ing con­fi­dence in the To­ba­go econ­o­my and in the steps promised to im­prove it. Here is an­oth­er state­ment of con­fi­dence: ‘I am thus rea­son­ably as­sured that the present stan­dards of liv­ing pre­vail­ing in To­ba­go will con­tin­ue un­abat­ed.’

But then, in the next breath, he makes this state­ment which makes us doubt he has done the rel­e­vant re­search on the state of the To­ba­go econ­o­my:

‘I am ad­vised that the To­ba­go econ­o­my is re­cov­er­ing af­ter the sharp slow­down dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and the tourism in­dus­try is now ben­e­fit­ing from re­newed in­ter­est from both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors. Di­rect in­ter­na­tion­al flights to and from To­ba­go and ho­tel oc­cu­pan­cy are in­creas­ing. In the con­text of the ex­pand­ing tourism sec­tor, the THA must play a vi­tal role in the re­cov­ery through sup­port for agri­cul­ture, cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.’

‘I am ad­vised,’ he says. By whom? As­sum­ing it’s the THA, is it cred­i­ble for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to fol­low their ad­vice for in­for­ma­tion on the To­ba­go econ­o­my? The fig­ures on the To­ba­go al­lo­ca­tions are pre­dictable but the eco­nom­ic ad­vice with­out sup­port­ing da­ta, pu­ta­tive­ly from the Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance, is not. He pro­vides the da­ta for the Trinidad econ­o­my but not for the To­ba­go econ­o­my.

Per­haps the es­say needs to be re­vised?

Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com