SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day an­nounced a $30 mil­lion agri­cul­tur­al stim­u­la­tion pack­age in the 2022 Bud­get for To­ba­go, which is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for about 100 farm­ers on about 300 acres of farm­land.

Im­bert an­nounced that a part of the $2.357 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for To­ba­go was a $30 mil­lion for farm­land de­vel­op­ment, de­signed to al­low for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of aban­doned or un­der­utilised agri­cul­tur­al es­tates and to as­sist farm­ers in To­ba­go to up­grade ex­ist­ing farm­land in­fra­struc­ture, equip­ment and tech­nol­o­gy and bring new ar­eas in­to pro­duc­tion.

Ad­dress­ing the al­lo­ca­tion af­ter­wards, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis said he was putting To­ba­go’s farm­ers on no­tice.

Den­nis told Guardian Me­dia that some To­ba­go farm­ers have been clam­our­ing for ac­cess to state lands and the time of re­demp­tion had ar­rived.

“This $30 mil­lion will be used to de­vel­op at least three ar­eas as part of Phase One: Lam­my Road, Ar­gyle, Bel­mont Road in Hope and Friend­ship Es­tate, a to­tal of al­most 300 acres of land and that is ex­pect­ed to al­low us to place ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 or so farm­ers in­to those de­vel­op­ments to en­gage in a high­er lev­el of agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion,” Den­nis said.

He said in Ar­gyle, there are farm­ers who are cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing with­out be­ing reg­u­larised. He said they will be reg­u­larised and there will al­so be room for new crop farm­ers to op­er­ate.

“Bel­mont Road will be strict­ly for live­stock pur­pos­es and of course, in Friend­ship, we ex­pect to have a mix of live­stock and crops, es­pe­cial­ly those tech­no­log­i­cal arrange­ments like hy­dro­pon­ics and aquapon­ics and that kind of thing,” he added.

Den­nis said the Tourism and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Sup­port Pro­gramme, to which $50 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed, was an­oth­er wel­come ini­tia­tive in the Bud­get. He promised to re­veal the full de­tails of the pro­gramme, which he said will pro­vide sup­port for tourism sec­tor work­ers and busi­ness­es in the com­ing days.

Den­nis said he was quite sat­is­fied with the Bud­get, say­ing al­though there are nu­mer­ous chal­lenges fac­ing coun­tries around the globe with the pan­dem­ic, there were no ‘harsh’ mea­sures an­nounced.

“All in all, I am quite sat­is­fied with not on­ly To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion, but the Bud­get pre­sent­ed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. I think it is quite rel­e­vant and de­spite the chal­lenges, I did not hear any harsh mea­sures.”

Den­nis said he be­lieves that oil prices that were not too bad al­lowed the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to stay away from those harsh mea­sures and be ‘flex­i­ble’ in the Bud­get. He said there were many pro­grammes in the Bud­get to stim­u­late busi­ness and sup­port the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty through the pan­dem­ic.

“In ad­di­tion to that, I think some ini­tia­tives, as well, pro­vid­ed mean­ing­ful sup­port to our vul­ner­a­ble per­sons, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the sit­u­a­tion now with in­creased food prices, all of which is the re­sult of the pan­dem­ic,” he said.

To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion will be $2.357 bil­lion, to in­clude $2.075 bil­lion for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, $264 mil­lion for cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture and $18 mil­lion for the URP pro­gramme. This rep­re­sents 4.5 per cent of Bud­get.

Min­is­ter Im­bert said that $788 mil­lion will al­so be spent in To­ba­go by Gov­ern­ment agen­cies and statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties.