An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) re­quest for a record $4.12 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for fis­cal 2027 is be­ing met with a mix of con­cern, frus­tra­tion and calls for greater ac­count­abil­i­ty from stake­hold­ers, farm­ers and econ­o­mists who ar­gue that high­er fund­ing re­quests must be matched by tan­gi­ble re­sults on the ground.

Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts un­veiled the re­quest dur­ing the THA’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day, de­scrib­ing it as part of a medi­um-term blue­print aimed at de­liv­er­ing re­sults-based gov­er­nance and putting To­ba­go on a path­way to pros­per­i­ty.

The re­quest­ed fig­ure is $400 mil­lion more than what the THA sought last year and rep­re­sents 6.6 per cent of the pro­ject­ed na­tion­al bud­get. The as­sem­bly re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of $2.99 bil­lion for fis­cal 2026, while Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo al­so an­nounced an ad­di­tion­al $783 mil­lion for To­ba­go through var­i­ous Gov­ern­ment min­istries.

The pro­posed al­lo­ca­tion im­me­di­ate­ly reignit­ed de­bate over whether in­creased fund­ing re­quests are jus­ti­fied, giv­en the pace of de­vel­op­ment and ex­e­cu­tion of projects across the is­land.

The THA’s re­quest for agri­cul­ture and fish­eries was $140.7 mil­lion.

Five years of al­lo­ca­tions

The Gov­ern­ment’s al­lo­ca­tions to the THA in the last sev­en years have con­sis­tent­ly fall­en be­low the amounts sought by the THA in that pe­ri­od:

For fis­cal 2020, the THA re­quest­ed $4.56 bil­lion, but re­ceived $2.22 bil­lion.

In fis­cal 2021, the As­sem­bly re­quest­ed $4.71 bil­lion, but re­ceived $2.134 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing 4.3 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get;

In fis­cal 2022, the THA asked for $3 bil­lion, but re­ceived $2.35 bil­lion;

In fis­cal 2023, the As­sem­bly re­quest­ed $3.97 bil­lion and re­ceived $2.52 bil­lion;

In fis­cal 2024, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive body re­quest­ed $5.54 bil­lion and re­ceived $2.58 bil­lion;

In fis­cal 2025, the THA asked for $2.956 bil­lion, re­ceiv­ing $2.59 bil­lion; and

In fis­cal 2026, the As­sem­bly re­quest­ed $3.71 bil­lion and re­ceived $3.72 bil­lion.

For some stake­hold­ers, the is­sue is not whether To­ba­go should re­ceive more mon­ey but whether the is­land is see­ing mea­sur­able re­turns on the fund­ing al­ready pro­vid­ed.
Farmer and meat shop own­er Ter­rence Joe­field said he has no ob­jec­tion to To­ba­go re­ceiv­ing ad­di­tion­al re­sources, but ques­tioned how ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vi­ous al­lo­ca­tions have been used.
“I don’t have a prob­lem in terms of putting mon­ey in,” Joe­field re­marked. “My prob­lem is, hope­ful­ly, the whole as­sem­bly thing is too late.”
He point­ed to long­stand­ing in­fra­struc­ture is­sues af­fect­ing farm­ers, in­clud­ing roads wa­ter, and elec­tric­i­ty.
“Some land­lords have been look­ing at us for more than four years now. They are some­times sup­posed to put you on the road, lights gone. It was on­ly this year that the road was fin­ished. Four years lat­er. Still wait­ing on wa­ter, still wait­ing on elec­tric­i­ty.”
Joe­field main­tained that To­ba­go has farm­ers will­ing and able to pro­duce, but said crit­i­cal sup­port sys­tems re­main ab­sent.
“It’s not like you don’t have farm­ers who want to do farm­ing. It’s just that the in­fra­struc­ture, the things that the as­sem­bly is sup­posed to be do­ing, they’re not do­ing it.”
He ar­gued that re­quests for larg­er bud­gets should be ac­com­pa­nied by vis­i­ble out­comes.
“I need to see con­crete ev­i­dence that the mon­ey that is asked for is be­ing used to help farm­ers.”
Joe­field al­so ques­tioned why To­ba­go con­tin­ues to im­port in­creas­ing vol­umes of agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts de­spite hav­ing lo­cal pro­duc­ers ready to ex­pand out­put.
“It’s not that there isn’t a mar­ket,” he stat­ed. “It’s just that the things to do aren’t in place.”

Calls for fol­low-through

Poul­try farmer Fan­ta Car­ring­ton echoed sim­i­lar con­cerns, say­ing the fo­cus should be on sup­port­ing farm­ers who have al­ready demon­strat­ed their abil­i­ty to pro­duce but re­quire as­sis­tance to scale op­er­a­tions.
“What I need to do is in­vest in the farm­ers who are show­ing the po­ten­tial to pro­duce, but just don’t have what is re­quired to get from point A to point B,” Car­ring­ton said.
She point­ed to is­sues such as land tenure, fi­nanc­ing and con­ti­nu­ity of pro­grammes across suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions.
“Why, when a new regime comes in­to gov­er­nance, do they just throw aside what the oth­er par­ty was do­ing?” she asked. “If we con­tin­ue like that, we don’t have any form of con­ti­nu­ity in the place.”
Car­ring­ton ar­gued that many projects have start­ed but nev­er been com­plet­ed.
“Even if they come in­to one or two ac­cess roads and they do grad­ing, they nev­er fol­low through and fin­ish those projects,” she said. “They just leave those roads with ur­ban drains.”
She be­lieves con­sul­ta­tions with farm­ers oc­cur pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly, but of­ten fail to trans­late in­to mean­ing­ful ac­tion.
“You keep these meet­ings, and then you see noth­ing com­ing out of those meet­ings,” Car­ring­ton ob­served.
Her con­cerns re­flect a broad­er sen­ti­ment among agri­cul­tur­al stake­hold­ers that while fund­ing an­nounce­ments are fre­quent, im­ple­men­ta­tion re­mains in­con­sis­tent.

Fis­cal dis­ci­pline ques­tioned

A for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, who de­clined to be iden­ti­fied, said the size of the THA’s re­quest rais­es ques­tions about fis­cal pru­dence giv­en the coun­try’s broad­er fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

The for­mer of­fi­cial not­ed that To­ba­go has his­tor­i­cal­ly nev­er re­ceived the full amount re­quest­ed in its an­nu­al bud­gets and sug­gest­ed the lat­est pro­pos­al ap­pears am­bi­tious when mea­sured against cur­rent fis­cal re­al­i­ties.

“I have no prob­lem giv­ing To­ba­go mon­ey,” the for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in­di­cat­ed. “But they need to show a lit­tle more fis­cal pru­dence.”
He point­ed to pres­sures fac­ing the na­tion­al trea­sury, in­clud­ing sig­nif­i­cant li­a­bil­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with the Ex­che­quer Ac­count.
“There’s still a mas­sive, mas­sive Ex­che­quer Ac­count bill to pay,” he stat­ed, not­ing that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al had flagged oblig­a­tions amount­ing to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $51.9 bil­lion.
The for­mer of­fi­cial ar­gued that while rev­enues may im­prove in the com­ing years, fis­cal dis­ci­pline re­mains crit­i­cal.
“We must record fis­cal sur­plus­es. Deficit just won’t do it.”
He sug­gest­ed that a re­quest of $4.12 bil­lion would im­ply an ex­cep­tion­al­ly large THA bud­get and ques­tioned whether such as­sump­tions are re­al­is­tic in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment.

For econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James, how­ev­er, the de­bate ex­tends be­yond the size of the al­lo­ca­tion and speaks to the ab­sence of a co­her­ent de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy for both To­ba­go and Trinidad.
James said the coun­try has failed for decades to align spend­ing de­ci­sions with a long-term eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion agen­da.
“The an­swer to that for 40 years has been no,” he said, when asked whether To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tions over time had gen­er­at­ed suf­fi­cient de­vel­op­ment to jus­ti­fy larg­er re­quests.

He con­tend­ed that dis­cus­sions about To­ba­go fund­ing of­ten fo­cus on en­ti­tle­ment rather than na­tion­al eco­nom­ic re­struc­tur­ing.
“In the mod­ern day, the coun­try has to wake up and face the fact that we need to di­ver­si­fy and de­vel­op the na­tion­al econ­o­my to get out of the mess oil and gas re­peat­ed­ly puts us in.”

James ar­gued that To­ba­go and Trinidad should be viewed as com­ple­men­tary parts of a broad­er na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment frame­work, with in­vest­ment de­ci­sions guid­ed by eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial rather than po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions.

“There are some things we can do best in To­ba­go, some things we can do well in Trinidad, and we need to al­lo­cate in­vest­ment re­sources in re­la­tion to that area.”

He main­tained that nei­ther To­ba­go nor Trinidad has un­der­gone a mean­ing­ful struc­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion over the past sev­er­al decades.

“We re­main de­pen­dent on en­er­gy down there. And we have made a lit­tle struc­tur­al change in To­ba­go. So we re­main de­pen­dent on Trinidad in To­ba­go.”

James al­so crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as a nar­row fo­cus on events rather than in­dus­tries ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing sus­tain­able growth.

“The THA said it wants to do the cre­ative in­dus­try. By that, it re­al­ly means cre­ative events,” he said. “Cre­ative in­dus­try and cre­ative events are two dif­fer­ent things.”
As To­ba­go pur­sues its largest fund­ing re­quest in his­to­ry, the de­bate sur­round­ing the pro­pos­al ap­pears like­ly to fo­cus not on­ly on how much mon­ey the is­land re­ceives but al­so on whether fu­ture al­lo­ca­tions can de­liv­er the trans­for­ma­tion stake­hold­ers say has re­mained elu­sive de­spite years of in­creas­ing bud­gets.