ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go West MP Joel Samp­son has strong­ly de­fend­ed the 2026 na­tion­al Bud­get, de­scrib­ing it as a fair and bal­anced fi­nan­cial plan that will dri­ve de­vel­op­ment acrossT&T. He al­so hailed it as one of the strongest bud­gets ever pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment.

“This is a pow­er­ful maid­en UNC bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. This bud­get is close to per­fec­tion,” Samp­son said.

He said the bud­get pro­vides a clear eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion, with tar­get­ed ini­tia­tives to stim­u­late growth in To­ba­go while gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits for Trinidad.

“Make no mis­take, the ma­jor­i­ty of this mon­ey to be spent in To­ba­go will gen­er­ate mul­ti­pli­ers in Trinidad. So when To­ba­go wins, Trinidad wins,” he added.

Samp­son dis­missed claims that To­ba­go was ne­glect­ed in the 2026 bud­get, say­ing the fig­ures show the op­po­site.

“The UNC Gov­ern­ment de­liv­ered to the peo­ple of To­ba­go what the PNM re­fused to do in over two decades—and they did this with­in just a few months in of­fice,” he said, call­ing it a his­toric mo­ment for the is­land.

He said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) re­ceived near­ly all of its re­quest­ed al­lo­ca­tions for fis­cal 2025–2026:

Per­son­nel ex­pen­di­ture: $757.7 mil­lion re­ceived of $787.3 mil­lion re­quest­ed (96.2 per cent)

Goods and ser­vices: $788.6 mil­lion re­ceived of $809 mil­lion re­quest­ed (97 per cent)

Cur­rent trans­fers and sub­si­dies: $1.1 bil­lion re­ceived of $1.07 bil­lion re­quest­ed (110 per cent)

Samp­son al­so out­lined sev­er­al pri­or­i­ty sec­tors that re­ceived fund­ing, in­clud­ing tourism, agri­cul­ture, in­fra­struc­ture, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment, and small busi­ness sup­port.

“Tourism re­quest­ed $179.5 mil­lion and re­ceived $176.8 mil­lion or 98.5 per cent. Agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty re­quest­ed $188.6 mil­lion and re­ceived $191.5 mil­lion or 101 per cent. Ed­u­ca­tion re­quest­ed $476.5 mil­lion and re­ceived $479 mil­lion or 100.5 per cent,” he said.

The MP said the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready be­gun tack­ling long-stand­ing chal­lenges in To­ba­go, point­ing to im­prove­ments such as in­creased do­mes­tic flights, sup­port from in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, quar­ry li­cens­ing ap­provals, and a $134 mil­lion boost for the THA.

“In five short but im­mense months, we have seen tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments,” he said.

Samp­son al­so re­ject­ed Op­po­si­tion crit­i­cism, say­ing his re­sponse to the bud­get was aimed at “break­ing the chains of PNM pro­pa­gan­da.”

He said To­ba­go is no longer be­ing treat­ed as a “crum­bling af­ter­thought” in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

“This UNC bud­get recog­nis­es To­ba­go as an in­te­gral part of the na­tion­al econ­o­my and fo­cus­es on Trinidad and To­ba­go first,” Samp­son said.