Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said on Mon­day that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) did not get the amount of mon­ey it re­quest­ed from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment be­tween 2017 and 2021 be­cause Gov­ern­ment T&T suf­fered a short­fall in rev­enue for that pe­ri­od.

Im­bert was re­spond­ing to a mat­ter on the ad­journ­ment brought by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr. Maria Dil­lon-Re­my dur­ing the sit­ting on Mon­day. The mat­ter called on te Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the short­falls in the re­leas­es to the THA over the five-year pe­ri­od.

She not­ed the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Coun­cil in­di­cat­ed that To­ba­go should be al­lo­cat­ed be­tween 4.03 per cent and 6.9 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get for each fi­nan­cial year. She said over the years, the al­lo­ca­tion has been at the end of the range.

Dil­lon-Re­my asked, “Giv­en the fact that To­ba­go has lacked suf­fi­cient monies for its de­vel­op­ment over the years and giv­en the fact that the THA cur­rent­ly owes con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers up to about $600 mil­lion, I’m ask­ing the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to in­di­cate what can be done about these out­stand­ing sums.

She read out the al­lo­ca­tions pro­vid­ed to the THA over the five-year pe­ri­od and the short­fall be­tween what was re­quest­ed and what was al­lo­cat­ed.

In re­sponse, Im­bert said some of the in­for­ma­tion in Sen­a­tor Re­my’s con­tri­bu­tion was sim­i­lar to the in­for­ma­tion con­tained in a let­ter to him from THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2022.

Im­bert ex­plained that the to­tal re­leas­es in Au­gus­tine’s let­ter were mis­lead­ing be­cause the tax­es col­lect­ed by the THA must be added to the sub­ven­tions from cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

“By virtue of the rel­e­vant laws, that fund­ing is kept by the THA, it is not re­mit­ted to the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund,” said Im­bert, adding that the non-cash re­leas­es, which are the tax­es col­lect­ed in To­ba­go, have to be added to the re­leas­es from cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance said he re­spond­ed to the Au­gus­tine’s Sep­tem­ber 23, 2022 let­ter on Jan­u­ary 16, 2023.

In his let­ter to the THA Chief Sec­re­tary, Im­bert said he ex­plained that the short­falls in the re­leas­es to the THA re­sult­ed from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment ex­pe­ri­enc­ing “se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial con­straints as its rev­enue col­lec­tion fell sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low the amounts pro­ject­ed due to the dras­tic fall in glob­al prices of oil and nat­ur­al gas.

“The sit­u­a­tion was fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic over the pe­ri­od 2020 to 2021 as eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try was vir­tu­al­ly at a stand­still.”

Im­bert said the point he made to Au­gus­tine was that the short­fall in rev­enue for the pe­ri­od 2017 to 2021 “se­vere­ly af­fect­ed the gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to meet all of the com­mit­ments en­vis­aged via ap­pro­pri­a­tion acts is­sued over the pe­ri­od. There­fore, ex­i­gen­cies ne­ces­si­tat­ed the repri­ori­ti­sa­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties as well as a roll­back of fund­ing to all min­istries and de­part­ments in­clu­sive of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.”

The Min­is­ter said he in­formed the Chief Sec­re­tary that the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act gave the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance the dis­cre­tion to lim­it or sus­pend any ex­pen­di­ture charged un­der any ap­pro­pri­a­tion act.

Im­bert fur­ther said that PNM cen­tral gov­ern­ment has been pro­vid­ing the THA with favourable fund­ings.

“I hope you un­der­stand that we have been very gen­er­ous. It fol­lows right through in all of the oth­ers.

Im­bert’s re­sponse came hours af­ter Au­gus­tine pre­sent­ed a 4.54 bil­lion THA bud­get for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year on Mon­day.