Fi­nance Sec­re­tary for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Joel Jack pre­sent­ed on Mon­day, what is now his eighth con­sec­u­tive bud­get.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Jack is re­quest­ing of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, an al­lo­ca­tion in the 2021 na­tion­al bud­get of $4.71 bil­lion. This in­cludes $3.07 bil­lion for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and $1.5 bil­lion for the De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.

Un­der the po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic arrange­ments the Fi­nance Sec­re­tary of the THA has to present his an­nu­al bud­get to the To­ba­go leg­is­la­ture and af­ter its ap­proval, it is sent to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for con­sid­er­a­tion as part of the na­tion­al bud­getary process.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance then has to pro­vide the THA with a min­i­mum por­tion of the na­tion­al bud­get in keep­ing with Act 40 of 1995.

Mr Jack’s bud­get is not dis­sim­i­lar from what he has done over the years. It is a bud­get that is re­liant on gov­ern­ment play­ing a ma­jor role in the econ­o­my with lit­tle or no plans for trans­form­ing To­ba­go’s econ­o­my in­to one that is dri­ven by the pri­vate sec­tor.

I know To­bag­o­ni­ans of­ten see it as an af­front for non To­bag­o­ni­ans to speak on what is hap­pen­ing on the is­land, es­pe­cial­ly if you do not live there and was not born and grew up on the is­land. But that aside since the re­sources that are sent to To­ba­go em­anate from the pock­ets of both To­bag­o­ni­ans and Trinida­di­ans and the nat­ur­al re­sources of the coun­try, we have to crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine the use of pub­lic funds and what is be­ing done on the is­land to in­crease rev­enue and make it more sus­tain­able.

It is in this con­text that Mr Jack’s bud­get con­tin­ues to fail To­bag­o­ni­ans and the tax­pay­ers of T&T.

By his own ad­mis­sion, the THA ac­counts for 44 per­cent of the to­tal GDP of the is­land. It em­ploys al­most two-thirds of those work­ing in To­ba­go and crowds out the pri­vate sec­tor.

Jack told the As­sem­bly on Mon­day: “The da­ta in­di­cate that the share of gov­ern­ment ac­tiv­i­ty in To­ba­go’s GDP was about 44 per cent in 2019, and the share of fi­nan­cial ser­vices was about 26 per cent in the same year. Madam Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, the tourism sec­tor ac­count­ed for about 13 per­cent of To­ba­go’s GDP in 2019.”

On­ly re­cent­ly I said in this col­umn that con­trary to the nar­ra­tive that has been pushed by the present ad­min­is­tra­tion and the THA, tourism is not the dri­ving force be­hind the To­ba­go’s econ­o­my. It is in fact the an­nu­al bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion from the Cen­tral gov­ern­ment. Mr Jack’s own num­bers tell part of the sto­ry.

You see as I have ar­gued, To­ba­go has done well po­lit­i­cal­ly. It has made it­self cru­cial to any PNM vic­to­ry in the elec­tion and it has done so while at the same time show­ing the PNM its votes are nev­er guar­an­teed. This has re­sult­ed in PNM Prime Min­is­ters, led by the late Patrick Man­ning hav­ing a mantra that said To­ba­go gets what To­ba­go wants. This of course is not af­ford­ed to the peo­ple of La Brea, Point Fortin, Ma­yaro, or even Laven­tille.

It may be fine to give To­ba­go what it wants but in giv­ing one re­ceives and what does the coun­try re­ceive in re­turn for the bil­lions spent di­rect­ly in To­ba­go.

Blessed with nat­ur­al beau­ty, still rel­a­tive­ly un­touched, To­ba­go has re­gressed over the last 15 years in its at­tempt to be a tourism des­ti­na­tion.

Its in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rivals have fall­en by more than 70 per­cent. It has not been able to at­tract ma­jor brand ho­tels, its ser­vice leaves a lot to be de­sired, and had it not had the ben­e­fit of vis­i­tors from Trinidad, its en­tire tourism sec­tor would have col­lapsed.

Among the myr­i­ad of prob­lems iden­ti­fied in tourism on the is­land are poor ser­vice, in­suf­fi­cient air­lift, par­tic­u­lar­ly from some source mar­kets, lim­it­ed des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing, in­suf­fi­cient high-qual­i­ty rooms.

The 2021 bud­get as pre­sent­ed by Mr Jack does noth­ing to ad­dress those is­sues. It is dis­ap­point­ing that the THA, which is re­spon­si­ble for fund­ing the op­er­a­tions of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency, the body set up to mar­ket and man­age To­ba­go’s tourism prod­uct would on­ly seek $235 mil­lion for Tourism/Trans­port and cul­ture. A mere 5 per­cent of what he wants from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in the next bud­get. It is a clear in­di­ca­tion of where Jack’s head is at.

To­ba­go has the po­ten­tial to be a pre­mi­um des­ti­na­tion but un­less you are pre­pared to de­vel­op the des­ti­na­tion, in­clud­ing spend­ing mon­ey on mar­ket­ing, you are un­like­ly to be suc­cess­ful.

But you see the THA does not have a re­al vest­ed in­ter­est in the tourism sec­tor. Why should Jack et al wor­ry about tourism? The THA em­ploys most of the peo­ple on the is­land. The sec­tor con­tributes lit­tle in terms of tax­es to the THA’ cof­fers, it does not ben­e­fit from ma­jor for­eign ex­change earn­ings from the sec­tor and it al­lows for sig­nif­i­cant­ly more pow­er if you can keep those em­ployed be­hold­en to you.

Jack told the As­sem­bly: “Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the largest de­cline is ex­pect­ed in the tourism sec­tor, fol­lowed by the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and the fi­nan­cial sec­tor. Com­par­a­tive­ly, the state sec­tor is fore­cast to grow, as gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture is buoyed by so­cial wel­fare spend­ing on re­lief pro­grammes.

Like­wise, the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor is pro­ject­ed to grow mod­er­ate­ly, aid­ed in part by var­i­ous ini­tia­tives aimed at boost­ing agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion on the is­land.”

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has mag­ni­fied the role of gov­ern­ment in so­ci­eties and the role of agri­cul­ture. The THA is mov­ing to fur­ther ex­pand gov­ern­ment ser­vices if we are to ex­trap­o­late from Mr Jack’s pre­sen­ta­tion.

Bless with some of the most arable soil in the coun­try, To­ba­go was once a ma­jor pro­duc­er of food for the coun­try. The ad­vent of big gov­ern­ment and to some ex­tent tourism, helped peo­ple on the sis­ter isle walk away from the land.

With the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the re­al­i­ty that this coun­try has to im­prove its food se­cu­ri­ty, there is now a greater fo­cus on agri­cul­ture. It is to Jack’s cred­it that he is propos­ing a ramp-up in agri­cul­ture spend­ing. But spend­ing alone will not do it and for now we must give the As­sem­bly time to flesh out a co­her­ent plan for agri­cul­ture on the is­land.

I how­ev­er want to com­mend the Fi­nance Sec­re­tary for his an­nounce­ment of a plan to have rep­utable pri­vate au­di­tors as­sess the op­er­a­tions of the THA. For too long, and with too many ex­am­ples of prof­li­gate spend­ing, the THA has been the poster child for lack of trans­paren­cy in the use of tax­pay­ers’ funds.

This may be a start but it is one that must be wel­comed so that the THA could prove it has spent tax­pay­er’s mon­ey with due dili­gence be­cause as my To­ba­go rel­a­tives will say: “even though mih ah wha hun­gry cock, mi nah ah eat rut­ten corn.”