WAL­TER AL­IBEY

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced $541,962,000 for the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2022-2023 Na­tion­al Bud­get at the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Af­ter close to four hours spent dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion based on an oil price as­sump­tion of US$92.50 and a nat­ur­al gas price of US$6 per MMB­tu, Im­bert al­so gloat­ed about the achieve­ments of T&T’s ath­letes dur­ing the Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land in Ju­ly/Au­gust, which he made clear was due to the fa­cil­i­ties con­struct­ed by his gov­ern­ment.

He lat­er as­sured the pub­lic that T&T will be the host of the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games next year.

The bud­get’s to­tal rev­enue is es­ti­mat­ed at $56.175 bil­lion as well as an ex­pen­di­ture that will amount to $57.685 bil­lion.

The $541,962,000 al­lo­ca­tion rep­re­sents $459,762,000, which in­cludes re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture which was an in­crease of $123,692,947 from last year, plus $82,200,000 for De­vel­op­ment Pro­grammes.

From the amount set aside for de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes, $30 mil­lion was bud­get­ed to stage the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games.

Im­bert, who had been ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er a bud­get of gloom and doom, said they can now look for­ward to the coun­try’s young ath­letes get­ting the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be show­cased to the rest of the world in 2023 when the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games is host­ed.

Ear­li­er in his pre­sen­ta­tion of the al­lo­ca­tion to sports, Im­bert said the gov­ern­ment lay­ing of the foun­da­tion, re­sult­ed in one of the bet­ter per­for­mances by a T&T team at the Com­mon­wealth Games.

“I wish to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­vey our con­grat­u­la­tions to the mem­bers of our sport­ing team, which re­cent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games in Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land. We all ap­plaud­ed with pride the achieve­ments of our medal­lists—Nicholas Paul, who was award­ed gold in the keirin event, sil­ver in the sprint, and bronze in the kilo­me­tre time tri­al; Jereem Richards who was award­ed gold in the 200 me­tres and an­oth­er gold in the 4x400m re­lays along­side Dwight St Hillaire; Asa Gue­vara, Machel Ce­de­nio, Kashief King and Che Lara,” he said.

“And Jerod El­cock, Er­ic Har­ri­son Ju­nior, Kion Ben­jamin, Kyle Greaux, and Akani His­lop, who won sil­ver in the men’s 4x100 me­tres re­lay.

“This per­for­mance added to that of the oth­er ath­letes who worked tire­less­ly rep­re­sent­ed a fit­ting trib­ute to the achieve­ment of our 60 years of In­de­pen­dence on Au­gust 31, 2022. In­deed we were right­ful­ly proud when our ath­letes stood on the podi­um with the Na­tion­al An­them be­ing played on the steel­pan.

“But our 2022 con­tin­gent man­aged our sec­ond-best per­for­mance at the Com­mon­wealth games. Those who are old enough to re­mem­ber our best per­for­mance came at the 1966 edi­tion in Kingston, Ja­maica when our team won five gold, two sil­ver, and two bronze medals. I am sure they will beat that record at the next Com­mon­wealth Games.”

He not­ed, “These achieve­ments were made based on the ex­ten­sive foun­da­tion which we have laid for more than four decades, we have the fa­cil­i­ties, the five sta­dia- the Hase­ly Craw­ford in Port-of-Spain, the Lar­ry Gomes in Ari­ma, the Ato Boldon in Cou­va, the Man­ny Ramjohn in Mara­bel­la and the Dwight Yorke in To­ba­go. The Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome and the Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Cou­va and the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre (NRC) in Tacarigua.

“We have the fund­ing and we have the pol­i­cy and pro­grammes, in­clud­ing the Elite As­sis­tance Pro­gramme of $250,000 per ath­lete.”