The Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) is call­ing out the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment(PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine for say­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans stands to lose a $300 mil­lion bond fa­cil­i­ty if the PDP takes charge of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) on Jan­u­ary 25.

David­son-Ce­les­tine, the PNM's can­di­date for Lam­beau/Sig­nal Hill, told sup­port­ers on Jan­u­ary 15 that vot­ing for the PDP could re­sult in the fund not be­ing avail­able.

At the PNM Mt St George meet­ing, she said, "We (PNM) are mov­ing for­ward to ob­tain­ing $300 mil­lion in bor­row­ing through bonds for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, and what I am told by the chief sec­re­tary and al­so the sec­re­tary of fi­nance and the econ­o­my, is that we are al­most close to re­ceiv­ing that fund­ing.

"I would ex­pect that by Jan­u­ary or Feb­ru­ary, we should be sign­ing on the dot­ted line."

How­ev­er, she said, if To­bag­o­ni­ans "put God out of their thoughts...and vote in the PDP" they will "lose that $300 mil­lion be­cause it re­quires the sup­port of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to en­sure that it hap­pens."

One of the PDP's lead­ers Far­ley Au­gus­tine called David­son-Ce­les­tine's state­ment "dan­ger­ous".

"This is not bond fi­nanc­ing from Bal­isi­er House," he told Guardian Me­dia.

"It's a clear in­di­ca­tion that PNM plans on pun­ish­ing To­ba­go for vot­ing PDP by re­scind­ing the per­mis­sion to bor­row. What kind of democ­ra­cy is this? Why does the PNM think that it owns To­bag­o­ni­ans? This is a dan­ger­ous state­ment, and To­bag­o­ni­ans should re­ject Tricky Tra­cy for it."

On May 27, 2020, the PNM's can­di­date for Mt St George/Ba­co­let Joel Jack said the $300 mil­lion bonds ap­proved by Cab­i­net in 2019 are ear­marked to fund some cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture projects in To­ba­go.

Jack, who is the im­me­di­ate past deputy chief sec­re­tary and sec­re­tary of fi­nance and the econ­o­my, said First Cit­i­zen Bank was re­spon­si­ble for ar­rang­ing the fi­nan­cial fa­cil­i­ty.

He could not say when the bond will be is­sued. "The THA con­tin­ues to work with our bankers to de­ter­mine the best time to is­sue the bond," Jack said then.

The THA has to re­pay the bond.

In Feb­ru­ary 2020, when Wade Mark ques­tioned Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in the Sen­ate about the bonds' re­pay­ment, he said the THA could re­pay the debt.

Im­bert said the Min­istry of Fi­nance in­tends to work close­ly with the THA in ex­e­cut­ing this bond and will en­sure the "terms and con­di­tions agreed up­on are in ac­cor­dance with the wider pub­lic sec­tor debt port­fo­lio."

He al­so said "The min­istry will en­sure...the funds are utilised for agreed projects in par­tic­u­lar de­vel­op­ment projects that are of great­est ben­e­fit to res­i­dents of To­ba­go and the wider pub­lic."