Akash Sama­roo

As the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) pre­pares for To­ba­go’s bud­get day on June 23, its Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my has re­vealed a sig­nif­i­cant shift and new ap­proach in how the fis­cal pri­or­i­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties will be pre­sent­ed.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts said that pre­vi­ous­ly the THA’s bud­get­ing process in­volved a pre­sen­ta­tion usu­al­ly in June of a com­pre­hen­sive bud­get, fol­lowed by a re­cal­i­brat­ed pre­sen­ta­tion post the na­tion­al bud­get read by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter lat­er that year.

Roberts said the rec­om­men­da­tion came from the Caribbean Re­gion­al Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance Cen­tre (CAR­TAC).

“What tra­di­tion­al­ly hap­pens, we go, and we read this long bud­get for three and a half, four hours, and we iden­ti­fy all our plans or pro­grams or ini­tia­tives. And then we come back again af­ter we get the num­bers and repri­or­i­tize,” Roberts ex­plained.

She added, “I'm do­ing it a bit dif­fer­ent­ly this year. So, I will iden­ti­fy some key ar­eas that we think will im­pact the econ­o­my and ac­cel­er­ate growth in the econ­o­my. And then the bud­get will not iden­ti­fy in de­tails specif­i­cal­ly the plans, pro­grammes, and ini­tia­tives. I will do that in Oc­to­ber af­ter the na­tion­al bud­get is read. So it is re­al­ly on the rec­om­men­da­tion of CAR­TAC that I've de­cid­ed to im­ple­ment a bud­get that is more point­ed, it's more fo­cused on the strate­gic ob­jec­tives on a macro lev­el.”

The Fi­nance Sec­re­tary said the June 23 bud­get will fo­cus on five strate­gic ar­eas crit­i­cal to To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. They will in­clude, Agri­cul­ture, Tourism and the Cre­ative Sec­tor, Hu­man Re­source De­vel­op­ment, In­fra­struc­ture and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion.

And with the mid-year bud­get re­view set for June 18, Roberts told Guardian Me­dia that To­ba­go will be keen­ly look­ing on.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly look­ing out for any­thing. We have got­ten noth­ing for the past two fis­cal years of the gov­ern­ment. And when I say noth­ing, last year we got 50 mil­lion and that was on­ly be­cause of the oil spill. So I would not con­sid­er that part of the mid-year re­view be­cause ba­si­cal­ly we had an un­fore­seen cir­cum­stance,” Roberts ex­plained.

Roberts said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo al­ready in­di­cat­ed that while mon­ey is tight, he as­sured her that To­ba­go will get some fund­ing.

“I did send some cor­re­spon­dence to him in­di­cat­ing some of the ar­eas where we would like to take care of. I'll give you, for ex­am­ple, when in 2021, when the PDP ad­min­is­tra­tion took over, we had a lot of li­a­bil­i­ties on the de­vel­op­ment side, about $700 mil­lion. And we have not been able to clear those in a sig­nif­i­cant way.”

Roberts added, “We do have an over­draft fa­cil­i­ty that we ac­ti­vate when the re­lease from cen­tral Gov­ern­ment comes late to To­ba­go. And that is to re­al­ly take care of the fund­ing gap.

"And when we ac­ti­vate this over­draft, it's 8% and it's very, very cost­ly for us. So, it's two things I'm deal­ing with. I'm deal­ing with the cur­rent cost of the over­draft and al­so the cu­mu­la­tive cost, which af­fects the liq­uid­i­ty on the fund ac­count right now.”

The Fi­nance Sec­re­tary said some ser­vice providers are still owed mon­ey for the Feb­ru­ary 2024 oil spill.

Roberts claimed that last fis­cal year the THA on­ly re­ceived $205 mil­lion. She said that had to be spread very thin.

“Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School is a school that re­quires a to­tal over­haul. As a mat­ter of fact, there's need for a new school. And the pre­vi­ous cen­tral gov­ern­ment gave us half a mil­lion dol­lars for Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary,” she re­vealed.

To­ba­go is legal­ly en­ti­tled to re­ceive be­tween 4.03%- 6.9% of the na­tion­al bud­get.

Lat­er this year, Roberts is hop­ing to get 5.1%.

She said so far con­ver­sa­tions with cen­tral Gov­ern­ment have giv­en her a sense of op­ti­mism.

“The meet­ings have been fan­tas­tic so far. Very pro­duc­tive, very cor­dial, very con­struc­tive, and a lot of re­spect. I think we have had a lot of dis­re­spect be­fore.”

An ex­am­ple of the “dis­re­spect” she claimed came in the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Beryl in Ju­ly 2024.

“I asked him (for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert) about the in­sur­ance pay­out for Hur­ri­cane Beryl, and he said, you're not go­ing to get that. We're not go­ing to give that to you. You don't pay the pre­mi­ums. So, the gov­ern­ment re­ceives a pay­out for Trinidad and for To­ba­go to take care of the dam­ages from a hur­ri­cane, and we nev­er re­ceived it.”

The June 23 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion will com­mence at 10 am.