Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Re­duced de­vel­op­ment fund­ing al­lo­cat­ed to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in the 2025 bud­get could put the “squeeze” on the pub­lic, ac­cord­ing to Gowrie Roop­nar­ine, chair­man of the Princes Town cor­po­ra­tion.

“The re­duced de­vel­op­ment fund­ing in this so-called ‘elec­tion bud­get’ will just in­di­rect­ly squeeze peo­ple—not ‘sweet­en’ them up,” Roop­nar­ine added yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing Mon­day’s un­veil­ing of the 2025 Bud­get.

Ac­com­pa­ny­ing bud­get doc­u­ments for de­vel­op­ment showed fig­ures that cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived for this as­pect of op­er­a­tions. Fund­ing was re­duced from the 2024 de­vel­op­ment fund­ing fig­ures—be­tween ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5 mil­lion and $1 mil­lion in some cas­es.

The de­vel­op­ment fund­ing for 2025 is as fol­lows: Port-of-Spain cor­po­ra­tion ($19.8 mil­lion); Ari­ma ($18.3 mil­lion); San Fer­nan­do cor­po­ra­tion ($20.1 mil­lion); Point Fortin ($17.7 mil­lion); Ch­agua­nas ($17.3 mil­lion); Diego Mar­tin bor­ough ($17.5 mil­lion); San Juan/Laven­tille cor­po­ra­tion ($17.2 mil­lion); Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co cor­po­ra­tion ($18.2 mil­lion); San­gre Grande ($17.8 mil­lion); Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro ($17.2 mil­lion); Ma­yaro/Rio Claro cor­po­ra­tion ($17.3 mil­lion); Siparia bor­ough ($17.4 mil­lion); Pe­nal Debe cor­po­ra­tion ($17.2 mil­lion); Princes Town ($17.4 mil­lion).

An­oth­er al­lo­ca­tion that the cor­po­ra­tions al­so re­ceived for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture (to pay staff and oth­er com­mit­ments) ranged from a max­i­mum of $230.6 mil­lion (PoS cor­po­ra­tion) to a min­i­mum of $61.1 mil­lion (Ma­yaro/Rio Claro cor­po­ra­tion).

Roop­nar­ine said, “Our de­vel­op­ment fund­ing in Princes Town was cut by about $3.4 mil­lion com­pared to 2024 fund­ing. It will be tough go­ing in 2025 as the de­vel­op­ment fund, which we all use to fund work to be done, has been re­duced for all cor­po­ra­tions.”

“Oth­er cor­po­ra­tions got less de­vel­op­ment fund­ing than us. While some got small­er ‘cuts’ than we did, oth­ers may be in prob­lems al­so.

“We in Princes Town can­not use the $74.4 mil­lion in re­cur­rent fund­ing that we got to do de­vel­op­ment work, as that is to pay staff and oth­er oblig­a­tions the cor­po­ra­tions must ful­fil to keep run­ning. We’ll al­so have to use the in­com­ing de­vel­op­ment funds to pay for projects that weren’t com­plet­ed in the last year. We couldn’t pay for that, since it was due to the min­istry’s late ap­proach,” Roop­nar­ine added.

“At the end of the day, we might end up with about $7 mil­lion to do projects for 2025, and that could ham­per ser­vice to burgess­es.”

Roop­nar­ine said the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to hand over prop­er­ty tax to cor­po­ra­tions would not help, since he said his cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived Fi­nance Min­istry word that the area may get about $7.3 mil­lion.

He said the Princes Town cor­po­ra­tion’s al­lo­ca­tion did not in­clude any­thing for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form ei­ther.

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry of­fi­cials said more in­for­ma­tion would emerge in the bud­get de­bate.

How­ev­er, they not­ed that the prop­er­ty tax in­come would be passed to cor­po­ra­tions to un­der­take their work, and it would be up to them to man­age for their burgess­es’ ben­e­fit.

They not­ed T&T’s cir­cum­stances and the fact that the 2025 bud­get had to be al­most the same size ($59 bil­lion) as the 2024 bud­get but added that the bud­get pre­sent­ed on Mon­day had de­tailed sound ways in which T&T could sur­vive the sit­u­a­tion un­til gas re­serves im­proved in 2027, “... If we all make the ef­fort and do the best we can with what we have ... and the cor­po­ra­tions all know how to man­age.”

The min­istry has $14 mil­lion in de­vel­op­ment fund­ing for im­ple­ment­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form and $5.466 mil­lion in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture for CEPEP (de­creased from 2024).

The min­istry al­so has $5 mil­lion each for the restora­tion of lo­cal roads, bridges, and land­slips and a $3 mil­lion drainage restora­tion plan, as well as a new item—a $500,000 mu­nic­i­pal flood mit­i­ga­tion pro­gramme.