To­ba­go should get at least an­oth­er bil­lion dol­lars in the up­com­ing bud­get to be used as a stim­u­lus.

This is ac­cord­ing to the deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the is­land’s sec­ond ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ty and the man vy­ing to be its next Chief Sec­re­tary, Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Au­gus­tine said the call for an ad­di­tion­al bil­lion dol­lars was based on the up­per lim­it of the rec­om­men­da­tion of the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion com­mis­sion that To­ba­go get be­tween 4.03 per cent and 6.9 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get.

He said in the past suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have kept to the low­er lim­it of the rec­om­men­da­tion and with the elec­tions due short­ly for a new To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly he ex­pect­ed the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to give the is­land more funds.

“First­ly, I can tell you that I am hop­ing and ex­pect­ing, that, at least they will at­tempt to bribe To­ba­go by giv­ing us clos­er to the high­er per­cent­age of the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion com­mis­sion re­quire­ments.... And the truth is if To­ba­go is to meet sig­nif­i­cant re­cov­ery from the what has hap­pened in covid then we need to get more to­wards a high­er per­cent­age, not so that it could be used in the way Tra­cy and those guys have been us­ing it, but to use in a man­ner that will al­low for the stim­u­lat­ing of the econ­o­my of To­ba­go,” Far­ley told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Q: “You talk about to 6.9 per cent, by my back of the en­ve­lope cal­cu­la­tion you are talk­ing about at least a bil­lion dol­lars more than To­ba­go gets now, is it that what you are think­ing as well?”

A: “Yes. I am. And if you no­tice suc­ces­sive THA bud­gets, you know nor­mal­ly we will meet in June and we will make a bud­get for To­ba­go and send it down to Trinidad, all of those bud­gets tend to be some­where in the re­gion of four bil­lion dol­lars.

Al­most al­ways, when we look at what we have al­ways re­ceived, is usu­al­ly a bit over two bil­lion dol­lars to the THA for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and for cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment and so what I’m ask­ing for is ac­tu­al­ly no dif­fer­ent from what PNM To­ba­go has asked for re­peat­ed­ly over the last, al­most 20 years. I will ad­mit though that PNM To­ba­go has not been good stew­ards of the re­sources giv­en to To­ba­go.”

Last year the THA re­ceived $2.134 bil­lion in the bud­get which rep­re­sent­ed 4.3 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get.

In Ju­ly the As­sem­bly’s Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Joel Jack told a news con­fer­ence that he will sub­mit a bud­get pro­pos­al of $3 bil­lion to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert, to cov­er THA spend­ing for the next fis­cal year.

This is es­sen­tial­ly a bil­lion more than last year’s al­lo­ca­tion.

Jack, who made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a post ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil me­dia brief­ing, said the fig­ure was de­rived af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with var­i­ous in­ter­est groups and di­vi­sion­al heads.

Guardian Me­dia tried to reach Jack on in­nu­mer­able oc­ca­sions but all calls to his mo­bile phone re­mained unan­swered and up to press time the calls were not re­turned.

Au­gus­tine said the sit­u­a­tion was dire in To­ba­go and mon­ey was need­ed from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to ame­lio­rate it.

“I could send you a sur­vey that was done by the Tourism Hos­pi­tal­i­ty As­so­ci­a­tion and among its mem­ber­ship, close to 75 per cent are say­ing that they don’t think they will be re­open­ing post-covid.

“So Co­co Reef would be the on­ly one. Tourism is the largest in­dus­try in To­ba­go out­side of the THA gov­ern­ment sec­tor. It means we are in for a very very rough re­cov­ery pe­ri­od and al­so there is the need to re­build the econ­o­my in To­ba­go.

“This re­quires a lot of cap­i­tal in­put from the gov­ern­ment sec­tor and it can­not be used just to win an elec­tion. It has to be very pur­pose­ful, it has to be in­vest­ed in the right places. Tourism be­ing one of those and I mean, un­for­tu­nate­ly the stim­u­lus that was avail­able to us, made avail­able to us by the gov­ern­ment have not re­al­ly gone any­where.”

Au­gus­tine said as an ex­am­ple of the chal­lenge fac­ing busi­ness­es on the sis­ter isle, on­ly about 28 per cent of the prop­er­ties in the same tourism sur­vey were suc­cess­ful in get­ting a mora­to­ri­um from the bank on pay­ments.

“We talk­ing about ho­tels and bed and break­fasts and AirBNBs and so on that have been closed for more than a year and on­ly 28 per cent were able to get the bank to hold off on de­mand­ing the re­pay­ments. We al­so have an­oth­er is­sue re­gard­ing the re­serve ca­pac­i­ty from T&TEC.

“Ho­tels are be­ing closed prac­ti­cal­ly al­most in­def­i­nite­ly yet they have to pay this re­verse ca­pac­i­ty fee. So think of a pay­ment of $30,000 when the month comes and there is no in­come. The lights is off, the rooms are locked up. There is no staff but you still have to pay that re­serve ca­pac­i­ty,” Au­gus­tine lament­ed.

He ar­gued that there are some ar­eas that have been ne­glect­ed by the THA in the last 20 years that if elect­ed his ad­min­is­tra­tion will have to pay some at­ten­tion to.

“So, why am I telling you all of this? I’m telling you all of this to say that re­al­ly and tru­ly To­ba­go needs some sort of stim­u­lus in­jec­tion, that is above the min­i­mum re­quire­ments of the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion com­mis­sion’s, rul­ing, which is the four point ze­ro, three per cent.

“We need clos­er to the 6.9 per cent. How that will be squared, with the na­tion­al bud­get, is an­oth­er ques­tion be­cause the same way we are look­ing for that kind of stim­u­lus in­jec­tion from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment I be­lieve Trinida­di­ans are look­ing for a sim­i­lar kind of in­jec­tion as well. And gen­er­al­ly, the en­tire econ­o­my is in sham­bles and we have been run­ning up deficits for a while, but you can’t re­al­ly see the tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits from the deficit bud­get­ing that we have been do­ing. So we are in quite a pick­le,” Au­gus­tine lament­ed.

Asked if he be­came the next Chief Sec­re­tary if he will fix the is­sue of the THA crowd­ing out the pri­vate sec­tor and em­ploy­ing 60 per cent of the work­force.

He said, “ I ac­tu­al­ly have a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ap­proach to what ex­ists at the mo­ment.

“So much so much for that I have been ac­cused of de­sir­ing to fire peo­ple in CEPEP and so on, which is the fur­thest thing from the truth be­cause I just be­lieve in hav­ing the gov­ern­ment sec­tor even more pro­duc­tive than it has been. I al­so have pro­posed a step-by-step mea­sure by which we can wean peo­ple from the pub­lic sec­tor.

“So I have ac­tu­al­ly de­vel­oped a plan, which I have placed be­fore To­bag­o­ni­ans al­ready which is that we can be­gin to stim­u­late pri­vate sec­tor goods by en­cour­ag­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship, en­cour­ag­ing those who are em­ployed with the THA to be­come en­tre­pre­neurs.”

He added, “In the end we do train­ing, and as we go along to get your busi­ness start­ed and you re­ceive your salary as nor­mal, but you get to spend some con­sid­er­able time away as you find your busi­ness.

“In year two we on­ly ex­pect 50 per cent of your time work­ing in the THA, 50 per cent with your busi­ness. By year three we need to wean you off com­plete­ly to your busi­ness. But every sin­gle year, we re­duce the amount of salary giv­en to you.”

He said by us­ing that kind of ap­proach we will give peo­ple an im­pe­tus to leave the pub­lic and move in­to the pri­vate sec­tor.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly Au­gus­tine said what has to be done is to em­pow­er the pri­vate sec­tor to do some of the very things the THA is do­ing. The THA at the mo­ment he not­ed com­petes with the pri­vate sec­tor in ba­sic things like the pro­vi­sion of an­i­mal feed to the farm­ers.

“The THA should not be a di­rect com­peti­tor with the pri­vate sec­tor. I don’t even agree with THA run­ning ho­tels. So I would have nev­er opt­ed to the pur­chase Man­ta Lodge and Sanc­tu­ary Ho­tel.

“Man­ta Lodge is un­der con­struc­tion at the mo­ment, fi­nal­ly af­ter all these years, but I re­al­ly and tru­ly do not be­lieve the THA should be get­ting in­volved in an in­dus­try to com­pete di­rect­ly with the pri­vate sec­tor. I re­al­ly don’t think that should be the case. So my ap­proach is a lot more rad­i­cal.

“My ap­proach is not to just go in and fire every­body in the pub­lic sec­tor, but my ap­proach is to say look let us find a way to wean you away from the pub­lic sec­tor and make you con­fi­dent enough to run your own busi­ness or to be em­ployed in the pri­vate sec­tor.” Au­gus­tine end­ed