Bri­an Lewis

From an eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial per­spec­tive, sport in T&T is fac­ing a re­al threat of the next few years be­ing bleak, giv­en the near com­plete de­pen­dence on Gov­ern­ment fund­ing.

In the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions will not be able to fund their op­er­a­tional costs, de­vel­op­ment and high per­for­mance plans. Sport is not a high pri­or­i­ty as the re­turn on in­vest­ment based on con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal think­ing is just not enough to jus­ti­fy sig­nif­i­cant fis­cal con­sid­er­a­tion.

It's not just in fis­cal terms that sport strug­gles to catch the at­ten­tion.The lack of im­ple­men­ta­tion in oth­er pol­i­cy ar­eas is no­tice­able. As an ex­am­ple there ought to be a an im­ple­mentable re­quire­ment that every hous­ing de­vel­op­ment both pub­lic and pri­vate should in­clude sport fa­cil­i­ties that will fos­ter and en­cour­age com­mu­ni­ties to main­tain an ac­tive lifestyle.

Projects such as the In­vaders Bay De­vel­op­ment Project should in­clude sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties while all HDC projects should have built-in sport fa­cil­i­ties.

How­ev­er world class fa­cil­i­ties will not by it­self move sport for­ward. Sport re­quires more pol­i­cy and less pol­i­tics. Vi­sion and pol­i­cy will trump pol­i­tics.Na­tion­al Sport Or­gan­i­sa­tions need more sup­port rather than less, and it is not just mon­ey.Sim­ply talk­ing sport and mak­ing state­ments that sound good doesn't mean that sport will re­ceive im­proved pol­i­cy con­sid­er­a­tion.

Na­tion­al Sport Or­gan­i­sa­tions need to come to­geth­er and take their des­tiny in­to their own hands. If this is not done, the fu­ture will cer­tain­ly not get any brighter.If sport is to over­come the stark eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal, fis­cal and pol­i­cy re­al­i­ties, na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions must shake loose their cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive shack­les.

Try­ing to get peo­ple to be open-mind­ed about do­ing things dif­fer­ent­ly is al­ways a bit of a chal­lenge. But if we don't cre­ate new box­es, prob­lems will con­tin­ue to be­come even hard­er to solve.New ideas and new think­ing about old prob­lems can de­liv­er so­lu­tions that would not have been con­sid­ered an op­tion. There is no lim­it to imag­i­na­tion.

Oil prices have fall­en be­low the US$45 per bar­rel re­vised price on which the na­tion­al bud­get is pred­i­cat­ed, and T&T may see fur­ther bud­get stream­lin­ing in the 2015/2016 fis­cal year, ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai who not­ed this at the launch of the in­au­gur­al an­nu­al Ox­ford Busi­ness Group (OBG) re­port at the Hilton Trinidad.

Sport stake­hold­ers need to take heed of all the pre­dic­tions. Com­ing up with so­lu­tions can't be based on ig­nor­ing or avoid­ing the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty. With the Olympics falling in fis­cal 2015/2016, some very well feel that the neg­a­tive im­pact may prove too much to over­come.These days it's dif­fi­cul­ty to pre­dict with any de­gree of cer­tain­ty what will hap­pen.

There is al­ways some new is­sue. Where are we head­ing?What will hap­pen on Sep­tem­ber 8? There are many crys­tal balls that one can have a look at in the hope of find­ing pre­dictabil­i­ty.What can the sport fra­ter­ni­ty look for­ward to af­ter elec­tions?To my mind, look­ing in­to the crys­tal ball would on­ly ig­nite frus­tra­tion.

Na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions have to give care­ful thought and con­sid­er­a­tion to what they want to do and how they will do it.Re­main­ing op­ti­mistic is eas­i­er said than done. Sep­tem­ber 7 is loom­ing large. The un­cer­tain­ty is not pro­duc­tive. As such, Sep­tem­ber 8 can't come soon enough.Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the Olympic Com­mit­tee.

Sup­port #10 Golds24 Ath­lete Wel­fare and Prepa­ra­tion Fund make your do­na­tions to any branch of Sco­tia­bank ac­count num­ber 171188.