Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s re­quest for $3.71 bil­lion “will be con­sid­ered” when the Gov­ern­ment pre­pares the next na­tion­al bud­get.

In a short re­sponse to a ques­tion on whether the Gov­ern­ment would ac­com­mo­date the THA’s re­quest for more fund­ing yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said, “The re­quest of the THA will be con­sid­ered by Gov­ern­ment in the prepa­ra­tion of the 2026 fis­cal pack­age.”

Dur­ing her bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, THA Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts de­tailed a $3.71 bil­lion bud­get–$2.71 bil­lion for re­cur­rent spend­ing and $1 bil­lion for de­vel­op­ment projects.

Roberts said the over­all fig­ure was based on a pre­dict­ed na­tion­al bud­get of $63.5 bil­lion and rep­re­sents 5.9 per cent of that amount. She lat­er told re­porters To­ba­go will not ac­cept any­thing less than 5.9 per cent, and that even if the fi­nal na­tion­al bud­get is dif­fer­ent, the THA still ex­pects to get its fair share.

“Ba­si­cal­ly, all To­ba­go is re­quest­ing is per capi­ta share, per capi­ta ex­pen­di­ture equal­i­ty as a min­i­mum rev­enue share to the THA. This is cal­cu­lat­ed as $5.90 out of every $100 in pro­posed na­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture in fis­cal 2026,” she added.

Mean­while, head of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Cur­tis Williams says the bud­get rep­re­sents a pos­i­tive shift.

He said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty sup­ports the help of­fered in the fis­cal pack­age for small busi­ness­es, farm­ing, tourism and dig­i­tal sys­tems.

“We went from the gen­er­al bud­get cuts to tar­get­ed SME-friend­ly in­vest­ment,” Williams said.

“The key take­away we will look at is the loan guar­an­tee pro­gramme, the To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Fund, the fo­cus on a strate­gic sec­tor—that is the tourism, the agri­cul­ture sec­tor. We see that fo­cus and on THA op­er­a­tion and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, and they promise to pro­duce SME re­silience and growth.”

Williams said the most im­por­tant thing, how­ev­er, is how well these plans work.

“The re­al test is how fast and ac­ces­si­ble these mea­sures will prove to be, and its sus­tain­abil­i­ty. So those are the things that we look for­ward to as the cham­ber,” he added.

He al­so sup­ports the THA’s push for 5.9 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get.

“We will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for a bet­ter slice of the pie, as we in­di­cat­ed ear­ly on. And 5.9 is a lim­it that we look at,” he said.

“We know things is not as easy as we thought it will be in terms of the econ­o­my in Trinidad and To­ba­go and our rev­enue, but we could ask the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to look at the acts and de­liv­er ac­cord­ing­ly. And I think that shouldn’t be a hard ask. I think that should be a very, very easy ask on be­half of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.”

In 2024, for­mer fi­nance sec­re­tary and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­quest­ed $3.9 bil­lion from cen­tral gov­ern­ment. At the time, he said the re­quest was with­in the range of 4.03–6.9 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get that was due to To­ba­go un­der the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mit­tee.