The Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment has been al­lo­cat­ed $404,613.209 mil­lion of the na­tion­al bud­get of $49.573B that was de­liv­ered by the min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert in par­lia­ment at the Red House in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day.

The fig­ure rep­re­sents an in­crease from last's year es­ti­mat­ed al­lo­ca­tion of $281 mil­lion which was re­vised to 234.8 mil­lion which was giv­en to the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs. Due to the con­trac­tion of the en­tire bud­get, some min­istries were al­lo­cat­ed less. The en­tire bud­get for the next fis­cal year is $49.573B, which is $1.258B less than the pre­vi­ous year.

Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment which is a new min­istry that re­places Sports and Youth Af­fairs which re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture is $283.7 mil­lion for fis­cal 2021.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter in­creased the ceil­ing from $6mil­lion to $12 mil­lion in terms of a tax break for any cor­po­rate cit­i­zen that pumps mon­ey in­to sport and youth de­vel­op­ment. Once any cor­po­rate en­ti­ty spon­sors sport or cul­tur­al events they will get a tax break of 100 per cent of what they put in up to $12 mil­lion.

Al­so, the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT) which is re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing 15 sport­ing dis­ci­plines and has di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for 13 sport­ing venues, has been bud­get­ed for $78 mil­lion. The T&T Box­ing Board will get an es­ti­mat­ed $1.5 mil­lion, while the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in To­ba­go has been bud­get­ed for $3.3 mil­lion with se­cu­ri­ty be­ing the biggest sin­gle ex­pen­di­ture at $1.2 mil­lion.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Bri­an Lewis told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Mon­day that he was hap­py with the en­cour­age­ment giv­en to the spon­sors who want to as­sist the ath­letes. "As the min­is­ter of fi­nance said each min­is­ter will have to ex­pand and give more de­tails so we wait on that but what I can say is that the en­cour­age­ment for cor­po­rate T&T to come on board and as­sist the ath­letes and sport­ing bod­ies is good.

Lewis said: "I would first like to have a look at the draft es­ti­mates to get a con­cept of what is on the ta­ble. These are dif­fi­cult times and sport­ing bod­ies in­clud­ing the T&TOC has to take a more strate­gic ap­proach in their mar­ket­ing. We have to look for op­por­tu­ni­ties in ad­ver­si­ty at present."

Chair­man of the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SPORTTDou­glas Ca­ma­cho says the dev­il is in the de­tails and he awaits to get fin­er de­tails to sum up his opin­ion.

Ca­ma­cho ex­plains: "We are in favour of the in­cen­tives giv­en to cor­po­rate T&T to help, we made rep­re­sen­ta­tion for this and it is good to see that it has hap­pened. You can prob­a­bly count on two hands the num­ber of com­pa­nies who took ad­van­tage of the $6 mil­lion tax break that was there, so giv­ing a big­ger break would get the big­ger com­pa­nies to come on board, like the RBL's, the RBC's the Guardian's. This move by the gov­ern­ment ac­tu­al­ly works with our phi­los­o­phy that sports is now a busi­ness and not recre­ation­al any­more. We have been dri­ving that process and now with this in­cen­tive, big­ger play­ers can come on board and as­sist with this di­rec­tion that we are tak­ing. This year, 2021 and even the next year af­ter that will be tough and one would have to cut to suit. The dev­il is in the de­tails so I await to see how much of the al­lo­ca­tion goes to sport and how much goes to com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment which is al­so un­der that al­lo­ca­tion."

Crick­et team own­er and ac­coun­tant Richard Ramkissoon who was very vo­cal lead­ing in­to the read­ing of the bud­get said that he is not too im­pressed. He said: "What we want­ed was not an in­crease in the ceil­ing but an in­crease in the tax break. When a spon­sor puts his mon­ey in he gets 100 per cent of that as a tax break. Be­fore it was 150 per cent and we want­ed to see that mark re­turn to 150 per cent.

"The min­is­ter im­proved the ceil­ing from $6M to $12M but cor­po­rate T&T was not even uti­liz­ing the full $6 mil­lion. What he need­ed to do was in­crease the ac­tu­al tax break. I am not im­pressed and if you look at the cut of the pie it is just about half of a per cent that has been al­lo­cat­ed to Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment."