Raphael John-Lall

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissooon be­lieves that lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions should be­come more ef­fi­cient and even en­gage in ac­tiv­i­ties that would raise their own rev­enue, giv­en the com­plaints by some cor­po­ra­tions that they do not re­ceive suf­fi­cient funds from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Ramkissoon said a high­er lev­el of ef­fi­cien­cy is long over­due across the pub­lic sec­tor in gen­er­al.

“Not on­ly in re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions but across the en­tire pub­lic sec­tor. This sit­u­a­tion has been one of our biggest chal­lenges since In­de­pen­dence and the suc­cess of any na­tion­al plan de­pends crit­i­cal­ly on pub­lic sec­tor ef­fi­cien­cy. Square pegs in round holes cer­tain­ly do not help nor are our politi­cians with­out blame for the poor per­for­mance of the pub­lic ser­vice over the years. Be warned that salary in­creas­es by them­selves will not gen­er­ate greater ef­fi­cien­cy.”

When asked if the fig­ure of $2.1 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to pay­ing 13,406 em­ploy­ees in re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions is enough, he said what is im­por­tant is pri­or­i­ty ar­eas are iden­ti­fied as fi­nan­cial re­sources are lim­it­ed.

“It is dif­fi­cult to say un­less oth­er al­lo­ca­tions and pri­or­i­ties are iden­ti­fied and con­sid­ered. It must how­ev­er be not­ed that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions touch re­al peo­ple in their day-to-day lives in the form of prop­er drains, roads, garbage col­lec­tion, play fields, etc. There­fore, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions must be high up on the list of pri­or­i­ties whether re­form takes place or not.”

Ramkissoon al­so spoke about the sug­ges­tion raised by the May­or of Port-of-Spain Chin­ua Al­leyne that cor­po­ra­tions need to start rais­ing their own rev­enue.

“Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions rais­ing at least some of their rev­enue from the ar­eas with­in their con­trol is pos­i­tive. So too is greater man­age­ment of af­fairs at the lo­cal lev­els. How­ev­er, this must be part of an over­all plan for fi­nanc­ing over­all so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment across the coun­try. Some cor­po­ra­tions may not be able to fund their en­tire needs on a sus­tain­able ba­sis and arrange­ments must be made for such sit­u­a­tions.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made it clear the $2.1 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies in the 2026 bud­get is “more than enough” say­ing the Gov­ern­ment would not pro­vide “a cent more” to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions un­less tax­pay­ers be­gin to see an im­prove­ment in the ser­vices de­liv­ered.

In a Face­book post on Jan­u­ary 24, she al­so said that there are thou­sands of lo­cal gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees yet their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is low.

“Tax­pay­ers are pay­ing 13,406 per­sons in lo­cal gov­ern­ment $2.1 bil­lion dol­lars, how­ev­er af­ter 9 am you would be lucky to see the ma­jor­i­ty of them out work­ing. That’s be­cause sign­ing the at­ten­dance book and re­turn­ing home by 9 am has be­come en­trenched pol­i­cy across ALL cor­po­ra­tions.”

Some re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are al­ready feel­ing the im­pact from lim­it­ed bud­gets.

On a Face­book post on Wednes­day, Port-of-Spain May­or said: “The in­con­ve­nient truth is that the bud­get of the City of Port-of-Spain has been dec­i­mat­ed by this Gov­ern­ment. Our bud­get cuts co­in­cide with a bud­get wind­fall for oth­er mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.”

He added that all cor­po­ra­tions are in dire need of more fund­ing but Ch­agua­nas’ gain should not come at the ex­pense of the peo­ple of Port-of-Spain.

“Cor­po­ra­tions need to be em­pow­ered to raise their own rev­enues so that, as elect­ed of­fi­cials, we can man­age our own af­fairs with­out min­is­te­r­i­al in­ter­fer­ence.”

Econ­o­mist Mar­i­ano Browne who has had ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence as a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and al­so in the pri­vate sec­tor, told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the re­al­i­ty is the cor­po­ra­tions do not have ac­cess to $2.1 bil­lion.

“Cur­rent trans­fers to statu­to­ry boards and sim­i­lar bod­ies amount to $1.535 bil­lion. There were al­so sub­si­dies and trans­fers of $688 mil­lion in the re­vised 2025 es­ti­mates. This year the fig­ure is $606 mil­lion less. Were these monies de­ployed in a way that helped the cor­po­ra­tions in the pre­vi­ous year? Are they re­quired to do more in the cur­rent year as a re­sult? If yes, are there ex­ist­ing re­sources suf­fi­cient to the task?”

He al­so dis­missed sug­ges­tions that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions could raise sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue in the short term.

“This is not very re­al­is­tic in the short term, but it is pos­si­ble to make some changes. Cit­i­zens are al­ready fac­ing ad­di­tion­al costs. Some peo­ple were pre­pared to line up and pay their prop­er­ty tax­es even if some did not. So giv­en the eco­nom­ic con­di­tions there will be re­sis­tance to ad­di­tion­al fees and charges. If cit­i­zens want a bet­ter lev­el of ser­vice from the cor­po­ra­tions they will need to pay more. But it is al­so clear that the cor­po­ra­tions will have to im­prove their lev­el of ser­vice. This is not a short term ex­er­cise.”

Econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les agrees with the Primer Min­is­ter’s stance that there should be greater ef­fi­cien­cy in the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

How­ev­er, he said he was not sure if the $2.1 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion is suf­fi­cient to cov­er the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions but did re­fer to news re­ports of work­ers be­ing sent home and bud­get cuts.

“I am hear­ing that many work­ers have been sent home and mon­ey is not avail­able to pick up garbage and clean up many spots. If that is the case then that $2.1 bil­lion would not be suf­fi­cient.”

Gon­za­les al­so spoke about the prop­er­ty tax which the last gov­ern­ment said would have par­tial­ly as­sist­ed in fund­ing the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

“The prop­er­ty tax went along these lines to free up the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions from to­tal de­pen­dence on the min­is­ter for fund­ing. At present, the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on the cen­tral gov­ern­ment which de­cides what it wants to fund. Let peo­ple in the area pay for what the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions should be do­ing. And if that is not enough then the cen­tral gov­ern­ment should add the dif­fer­ence.”

Self suffien­cy

For­mer min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi said the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion did make at­tempts to cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment for lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions to be­gin to raise their own rev­enue.

“When I was Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, we had built out a lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment port­fo­lio for every cor­po­ra­tion, which would have al­lowed them to gain in­de­pen­dence.

“Look at the work that we did in the Ch­agua­nas mar­ket, look at the work we did in the Ari­ma mar­ket to al­low them to lit­er­al­ly in­crease their rev­enue by a thou­sand per­cent. So, by the in­tro­duc­tion of lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment booths, we were able to rad­i­cal­ly im­prove the rev­enue col­lec­tion gen­er­a­tion with lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.”

When he just as­sumed the port­fo­lio of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter in 2022, Al Rawi promised that the mon­ey gen­er­at­ed from prop­er­ty tax would be used to con­struct and main­tain lo­cal roads, for which lo­cal gov­ern­ment is re­spon­si­ble, as well as main­tain drains, lo­cal health, garbage col­lec­tion, recre­ation­al grounds and parks, ceme­ter­ies and tourism sites.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate last Sep­tem­ber, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh dis­closed that the to­tal sum of prop­er­ty tax col­lect­ed as of May 2025 was $135.5 mil­lion, with funds dis­trib­uted to the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) with the largest pay­ment of $23.2 mil­lion go­ing to the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Al Rawi re­ferred to last fis­cal year and $135.5 mil­lion that was raised from the prop­er­ty tax but claimed that this Gov­ern­ment did not use it to fund any ma­jor lo­cal gov­ern­ment projects.

“Now, an­oth­er ma­jor thing that hap­pened is that even though the gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed $135 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax…none of it came to the lo­cal gov­ern­ment. So, we had part of the last (fis­cal) year, they had part of the year.”

He added: “Our en­tire lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form was built up­on the phi­los­o­phy that lo­cal gov­ern­ment should gen­er­ate its own in­come.”