The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) has been al­lo­cat­ed $10 mil­lion for 2025 for an elec­tron­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and elec­tion man­age­ment sys­tem.

Mean­while, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry will have a new $19 mil­lion school emer­gency re­pair con­tin­gency.

Al­so, T&T’s $5.3B Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan (PSIP) for 2025 fo­cus­es on ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al work—pub­lic build­ings, in­clud­ing the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. This is among items in the 2025 De­vel­op­ment Plan, in­clud­ing the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Plan (IDF) and the PSIP, which were part of the bud­get doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed a $59.74B Bud­get for 2024-2025.

Al­so among new items, the IDF lists $20 mil­lion for a new head of­fice for the EBC.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, which re­ceived $7.51 bil­lion in the bud­get, will al­so have a new $19 mil­lion school emer­gency re­pair and re­fur­bish­ment con­tin­gency.

The min­istry’s al­lo­ca­tion in­cludes $10 mil­lion for the ac­qui­si­tion and de­liv­ery of lap­tops and tablets and a $15 mil­lion dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme.

Al­so in the de­vel­op­ment re­port is a $1 mil­lion restora­tion of the Pres­i­dent’s res­i­dence (Phase 2) and $400 mil­lion for “con­tin­u­a­tion of build­ings.”

Among fund­ing for min­istries is $3.1 mil­lion in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice for out­fit­ting ac­com­mo­da­tion for the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (North).

The IDF al­so has $1 mil­lion for a fea­si­bil­i­ty study for a fast fer­ry port in To­co and $1 mil­lion for the de­vel­op­ment of a ma­ri­na fa­cil­i­ty in To­ba­go. Some $15 mil­lion is ear­marked for im­prove­ment/ex­pan­sion work at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo, $15 mil­lion for the es­tab­lish­ment of an as­sess­ment cen­tre for the so­cial­ly dis­placed, $6 mil­lion for Pan Trin­ba­go’s head­quar­ters, $10 mil­lion for a Bap­tist cathe­dral, and $6 mil­lion for Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral restora­tion.

The IDF in­cludes ren­o­va­tion of gov­ern­ment build­ings and $1 mil­lion for a hos­tel for boys. Oth­er projects in­clude a $3 mil­lion Ma­yaro li­brary, $9 mil­lion Dei­go Mar­tin li­brary con­struc­tion, $10 mil­lion La Hor­quet­ta li­brary, and a $770,000 new le­gal aid/ad­vi­so­ry au­thor­i­ty mo­bile out­reach pro­gramme.

No fund­ing was stat­ed for 2025 in the de­vel­op­ment re­port for cer­tain items list­ed: de­sign and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a pen­sion sys­tem for gov­ern­ment dai­ly-paid work­ers, though sums were al­lo­cat­ed in 2024 es­ti­mates.

Noth­ing was al­lo­cat­ed for Labour’s op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil or for Agri­cul­ture’s im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ac­tion plan to ad­dress il­le­gal un­re­port­ed/un­reg­u­lat­ed fish­ing in T&T wa­ters.

No fig­ure was giv­en for 2025 for tourism’s im­ple­men­ta­tion of a sports mas­ter plan. An item called “Uni­ver­si­ty of To­ba­go” had nil al­lo­ca­tion list­ed, though sums were list­ed in 2023-24 es­ti­mates.

$6B PSIP small­er than 2024

The to­tal PSIP al­lo­ca­tion of $5,666.2 mil­lion will be dis­trib­uted among 1,383 pro­grammes and projects. It will be geared to­wards the im­ple­men­ta­tion of projects and pro­grammes that will aid in achiev­ing the goals of Vi­sion 2030.

Pri­or­i­ty fund­ing will be giv­en for ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al work, in­clud­ing pub­lic build­ings like the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The “Con­struc­tion of Build­ings” Project will re­ceive the high­est al­lo­ca­tion of $400.0 mil­lion, fol­lowed by work on the Robin­son Air­port ($208.1 mil­lion) and the ac­cel­er­at­ed Hous­ing Pro­gramme ($200.0 mil­lion). Aris­ing out of the pol­i­cy re­spons­es to ad­dress the chal­lenges over the medi­um-term 2021–2025, the PSIP has nine pri­or­i­ty ar­eas. As in 2024, the theme “Putting Peo­ple First: Nur­tur­ing Our Great­est As­set” will be al­lo­cat­ed the largest share of the 2025 PSP with $1,911.7 mil­lion or 33.7 per cent of the to­tal bud­get­ed sum.

The re­port stat­ed, “While there is a de­cline in the over­all al­lo­ca­tion of $552.4 mil­lion, from $6,218.6 mil­lion in fis­cal year 2024, there is a pos­i­tive shift to­wards en­hanc­ing gov­er­nance and ser­vice ex­cel­lence ...”

The ar­eas of PSIP fo­cus are Fos­ter­ing Cit­i­zen Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty; Pro­tect­ing the Vul­ner­a­ble, En­sur­ing Food Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty; Im­prov­ing Pub­lic Health; Build­ing Cli­mate and En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­silience; In­vest in Strate­gic Sec­tors to Cre­ate Growth and Jobs’ Cre­at­ing A Dig­i­tal Na­tion; Ra­tio­nal­is­ing Pub­lic In­vest­ment for Greater Ef­fi­cien­cy and Ef­fec­tive­ness and Eco­nom­ic Re­cov­ery; Build­ing Lives and Liveli­hoods.

2025 PLANS IN­CLUDE:

FI­NANCE- $10m for es­tab­lish­ing the TT Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty; $4m for a Gam­ing Com­mis­sion; $2m for es­tab­lish­ing the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor;

SO­CIAL DE­VL­OP­MENT - $7m De­vel­op­men­tal cen­tre for peo­ple with chal­lenges; $35m for con­struc­tion of Min­istry head­quar­ters.

WORKS - $ 6m in­fra­struc­ture /flood mit­i­ga­tion plan; $ 5m drainage pump/gate in­ven­to­ry; $4m land­slip sta­bil­i­sa­tion pro­gramme; $18m for “spec­i­fied” equip­ment for POS Port; $4m for wreck/derelict ves­sel re­moval

HEALTH - $150m re­nal dial­y­sis spe­cial pro­gramme; $6M for the wait­ing list for surgery

AGRI­CUL­TURE - $2.6m for ca­pac­i­ty build­ing of Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad.

PUB­LIC UTIL­I­TIES - $5m street light­ing pro­gramme; new $1M hy­dro­log­i­cal ground­wa­ter as­sess­ment plan; new $2m weath­er radar sys­tem.

HOUS­ING - $30m for Petrotrin res­i­den­tial lots de­vel­op­ment; $50m for Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment pro­gramme; $11m squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties reg­is­tra­tion thrust; $ 4m East POS so­cial and eco­nom­ic pro­gramme; $4m East POS com­mu­ni­ty re­gen­er­a­tion.

FOR­EIGN AF­FAIRS - es­tab­lish­ing em­bassies in Kenya, Bar­ba­dos, Ghana, Qatar; $10m up­grade of over­seas mis­sions.

TOURISM - $ 15m site/at­trac­tion up­grades; $2m for POS car­ni­val mu­se­um

PLAN­NING- $ 23m for con­duct­ing the 2022 pop­u­la­tion/hous­ing cen­sus.

SPORT – In IDF $7.9m up­grade of Lara Acad­e­my; $18m for re­de­vel­op­ment of Skin­ner Parks; $10m for com­mu­ni­ty swim­ming pools; $2m re­fur­bish­ment of com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties; $3.5m en­hanc­ing em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty in com­mu­ni­ties plan.

YOUTH DE­VEL­OP­MENT $7m “Youth de­vel­op­ment project for­mu­la­tion”; $6.5m short term plan for na­tion­al ser­vice pro­gramme.

DIG­I­TAL TRANS­FOR­MA­TION - $16m for es­tab­lish­ment of Gov­ern­ment dig­i­tal so­lu­tions/ser­vices; $10m im­ple­men­ta­tion of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion agen­da; $8m Dig­i­tal econ­o­my pro­gramme

PUB­LIC AD­MIN­IS­TRA­TION -$ 10m for ac­qui­si­tion of build­ing for gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion

PER­SON­NEL $2.1m for out­fit­ting new 3 Alexan­dra Street st Clair build­ing.

TRADE -$12m for Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency

THA- re­ac­ti­vat­ed $200,000 “Goat mul­ti­pli­ca­tion” breed­ing cen­tre, $200,000 Sar­gus­sum re­sponse.