The new­ly-elect­ed Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Far­ley Chavez Au­gus­tine has warned To­bag­o­ni­ans that they face a chal­leng­ing fi­nan­cial start to their term in of­fice, claim­ing that the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion left the in­com­ing lead­er­ship a bed of thorns to lie on.

In a de­tailed in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian (BG) about the Peo­ple’s De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ot’s (PDP) eco­nom­ic plans for the is­land, Au­gus­tine said those plans are to be tem­pered by the re­al­i­ty that To­ba­go is fac­ing head­winds and it was not helped by what he said was the prof­li­gate spend­ing of the last ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“So yes we are in quite a pick­le, ask­ing cen­tral gov­ern­ment for more mon­ey, that is high­ly un­like­ly. It means we have to find ways to raise the cap­i­tal. We will have to re­ly heav­i­ly on Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships and giv­en the state of the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor we will have to re­ly on in­vestors com­ing from out­side of the bor­ders of To­ba­go as well. So we just have to buck­le down,” Au­gus­tine in­sist­ed.

The in­com­ing Chief Sec­re­tary said he has been in­formed that the PNM had placed the As­sem­bly in the red and had spent all the mon­ey it had so far re­ceived for de­vel­op­ment ex­pen­di­ture.

“Let me be hon­est with you, and I am giv­ing you ver­ba­tim what I am be­ing told, as at the end of No­vem­ber the THA re­ceived $43M for the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme. At the end of No­vem­ber the THA has spent $53M, that’s $9M in the red. We need to add to that, the fact that the THA has been try­ing to source $66M for all of those last minute elec­tion projects that they had. That’s a po­ten­tial $75M in the red. And the ex­pect­ed re­lease for the month of De­cem­ber is $23M. We are in quite a pick­le,” He told BG.

Au­gus­tine added: “We may have ex­pend­ed most of our con­tin­gency fund, my un­der­stand­ing is al­so the bond fi­nanc­ing we have, and that bond fi­nanc­ing that was sup­posed to be used for man­ag­ing coastal ero­sion, my un­der­stand­ing is that $160M, that we have been draw­ing down from that, spend­ing it and we still have not come up with a list of pri­or­i­ty projects.”

The PDP’s deputy po­lit­i­cal leader in­sist­ed that the par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader, Wat­son Duke, will not be the next Fi­nance Sec­re­tary and that he was look­ing to bring in an un­elect­ed mem­ber with the req­ui­site ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise to hold down the key port­fo­lio.

Au­gus­tine how­ev­er in­sist­ed that his ad­min­is­tra­tion will be sup­port­ive of the pri­vater sec­tor and will not im­pede its de­vel­op­ment but rather en­cour­age it to grow.

He said: “I am heavy on de­vel­op­ing the pri­vate sec­tor in To­ba­go. Our pri­vate sec­tor is weak. In fact COVID has ex­posed bear how weak our sec­tor is, and for that to change it re­quires the THA shifts its po­si­tion when it comes to the pri­vate sec­tor.”

Au­gus­tine added: “The THA should not be­come a di­rect com­peti­tor with the pri­vate sec­tor for any­thing. The THA has to pro­vide ad­e­quate room for the pri­vate sec­tor to grow, and we have to sup­port the pri­vate sec­tor with in­cen­tives in post COVID days. It will re­quire some heavy bailouts and we have to en­cour­age en­tre­pre­neur­ship in a very heavy way.”

He ex­plained that the THA need­ed to find ways to con­nect the To­ba­go pri­vate sec­tor with the Trinidad mar­ket which he re­mind­ed was over one mil­lion peo­ple that To­ba­go busi­ness­es could seek to sell in­to.

“We do not re­quire a visa, we do not re­quire any spe­cial reg­is­tra­tion..and with that kind of ben­e­fit it means we have been miss­ing out on the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sell To­ba­go’s goods and ser­vices to our neigh­bours in Trinidad,” Au­gus­tine told the Busi­ness Guardian.

The in­com­ing Chief Sec­re­tary said there is a need to pri­ori­tise things like agro pro­cess­ing and agri­cul­ture with the req­ui­site sup­port sys­tems in­clud­ing food pro­cess­ing, test­ing and vet­eri­nary ser­vices.

He said the THA must al­so at­tract what he calls worth­while For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ment(FDI). Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine it can­not be like the San­dals mod­el where the coun­try puts out most of the mon­ey and San­dals op­er­ates it and us­es its brand to at­tract vis­i­tors. He wants in­vestors that have more skin in the game.

Au­gus­tine was asked if he would sup­port the Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels Lim­it­ed’s plan to con­struct a $500M 200-room Mar­riott-brand­ed ho­tel at Rocky Point, To­ba­go.

When com­plet­ed, the project is ex­pect­ed to com­prise a 200 room ho­tel, 28 du­plex res­i­dences, 11 sin­gle-fam­i­ly lux­u­ry vil­las, 12 town hous­es and a full-scale of lux­u­ry ameni­ties.

Au­gus­tine said he did not, in prin­ci­ple have an is­sue with the project but his con­cern was what he con­tend­ed was a lack of in­volve­ment of the THA in dri­ving the project.

He ar­gued that with tourism be­ing the do­main of the THA on the is­land it is on­ly prop­er that these projects em­anate from the THA and not the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

The Chief Sec­re­tary elect said the PNM gov­ern­ment can­not claim to sup­port greater au­ton­o­my for the sis­ter isle and at the same time seeks to ab­ro­gate pow­ers that should be­long to the As­sem­bly.

“I have made it clear that we are not ob­ject­ing to hav­ing that kind of project here. What we have been ob­ject­ing to is the fact that we are hav­ing this project and the THA has nev­er been in­formed. The THA has nev­er been part of the dis­cus­sion.

“Quite frankly we don’t even know what the project will look like, we don’t know what are the mer­its and de­mer­its of it…so it is dif­fi­cult to sup­port some­thing you don’t know and to ral­ly To­bag­o­ni­ans in­to sup­port­ing some­thing that we don’t know any­thing about and so I am hope­ful those in­volved in that project will come speed­i­ly to the THA, we will sit, we will talk about it we will look in­to the mer­its and de­mer­its of it. We will see if its pos­si­ble, what works, we can give sug­ges­tions to make it bet­ter and then we can have the project off the ground,” Far­ley told the BG.