ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s To­ba­go chair, Cur­tis Williams, is plead­ing with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to “have a heart” and al­lo­cate more funds to To­ba­go for the 2024 to 2025 fis­cal year.

This re­quest fol­lows the $3.95 bil­lion bud­get pro­pos­al sub­mit­ted by To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine on Mon­day.

Mak­ing a pas­sion­ate plea for the funds, Williams heav­i­ly en­dorsed Au­gus­tine’s re­quest for 5.8 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get, hop­ing for even more to meet To­ba­go’s needs.

“I re­al­ly want him to get a lit­tle more. If he can get some more, that will be re­al­ly, re­al­ly good.

“So I am plead­ing with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, have a heart for 2025, give To­ba­go some­thing that we all smile go­ing for­ward. Just have a heart for us for this year. We re­al­ly need the ex­tra fund­ing as you can see, we have bills to pay, and we have com­mit­ments that we put them for­ward and we re­al­ly need to meet these com­mit­ments. I’m re­al­ly plead­ing to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. Please have a heart go­ing for­ward with To­ba­go folks,” Williams said at the launch of the cham­ber’s web­site in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Au­gus­tine said he hoped, with an up­com­ing elec­tion, that Im­bert would be gen­er­ous. He felt cer­tain that every­one, in­clu­sive of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Im­bert, would agree that the THA’s re­quest is “rea­son­able and just.”

Over­all, Williams said the bud­get ad­dressed is­sues faced by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on the is­land.

“Ma­jor­i­ty of our mem­bers were pleased with the pre­sen­ta­tion,” he said, prais­ing Au­gus­tine for ad­dress­ing key con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly the need for a strate­gic pol­i­cy frame­work to guide fu­ture de­vel­op­ment.

He was re­fer­ring to Au­gus­tine’s 20-year strate­gic pol­i­cy plan and the need for con­ti­nu­ity and sta­bil­i­ty, re­gard­less of who leads the THA.

The pro­posed loan guar­an­tee pro­gramme al­so re­ceived praise, as it would pro­vide much-need­ed fi­nanc­ing for work­ing cap­i­tal and al­low busi­ness­es to use land as col­lat­er­al, Williams said.

With the air­port project set to be com­plet­ed in mid-2025, Williams spoke of the need for lo­cal busi­ness­es to pre­pare for this op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“We urge the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to get ready for this de­vel­op­ment. If you’re not pre­pared, you may miss out ... be­cause if you are not ready and some­one comes in­to the space and takes ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty, don’t blame any­one but your­self,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing the plan in the bud­get to set up a unit to ad­dress the prop­er­ty tax and T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty mat­ter in To­ba­go, Williams joined Au­gus­tine in call­ing for a res­o­lu­tion of the RPO (Reg­is­tered Prop­er­ty Own­er) sys­tem is­sues.

He said many prop­er­ties in To­ba­go are still un­der the names of de­ceased rel­a­tives, pre­vent­ing their use as col­lat­er­al.

“Fix the RPO sit­u­a­tion and give us some own­er­ship. This will en­able us to use these valu­able prop­er­ties to se­cure loans,” he said.

On the top­ic of crime, he said the busi­ness sec­tor is sat­is­fied with the THA ini­tia­tives to re­duce crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly the set­ting up of a po­lice unit.