Camille McEach­nie

Mem­bers of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce say the 2019/2020 fis­cal pack­age is “Gov­ern­ment’s ...worst bud­get.”

They say it lacked the “stim­u­la­tion pack­age ...nec­es­sary to take To­ba­go for­ward.”

At a press con­fer­ence, just af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed the $50.50 Bil­lion Na­tion­al Bud­get on Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 7, mem­bers of the Cham­ber said they need­ed “to clar­i­fy the fig­ures pre­sent­ed on the To­ba­go sit­u­a­tion.”

“What are we do­ing about the de­vel­op­ment of the is­land be­sides get­ting a cheque from Trinidad...It (bud­get) was a big lie low; full of air,” chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion’s Cham­ber Di­ane Hadad said.

Speak­ing at the meet­ing, Chris James, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, said the pack­age did not con­tain mea­sures to boost the is­land’s tourism in­dus­try which “re­mains in shock, hav­ing slumped over the past 10 years.”

“ We are way down on what we used to get (tourists ar­rivals) 10 years ago. This has been a long 10 years of a down­ward trend,” James said.

He said 18,000 in­ter­na­tion­al tourists vis­it­ed To­ba­go last year and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 are ex­pect­ed this year.

He said the sit­u­a­tion would have been bet­ter if the Thomas Cook win­ter flights had not been lost. He said the gains from the in­tro­duc­tion of the Sun­wing Air­lines flights from Cana­da have been lost be­cause of the can­cel­la­tion of the Con­dor win­ter flights.

The tourism in­sid­er said the in­tro­duc­tion of the To­ba­go Tourism Agency as­sist­ed in help­ing the in­dus­try but not­ed that the agency has been starved for funds to mar­ket Des­ti­na­tion To­ba­go.

“We must en­sure the agency gets the mon­ey it re­quest­ed. We need to make sure they get the $140 mil­lion they need to do their mar­ket­ing,” James said.

He lament­ed the ab­sence of pro­vi­sions for the in-tran­sit desk at the Pi­ar­co air­port to ac­com­mo­date in­ter­na­tion­al tourists fly­ing to To­ba­go.

Or­win Dil­lion, a farmer who al­so spoke at the meet­ing, said al­though the agri­cul­ture sec­tor “is pleased with the tax-free mea­sures to as­sist the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, farm­ers need land.”

“My con­cern is for the land avail­abil­i­ty for agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion. It’s one thing to have the tax (in­cen­tive) but where will you im­ple­ment pro­duc­tion?” Dil­lion asked.

David Young, a mem­ber of the Cham­ber’s man­age­ment com­mit­tee, said more leg­is­la­tion is key for To­ba­go to de­vel­op.

“ Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion... needs to go in place... it lev­els the play­ing field and gives eq­ui­ty to all busi­ness­es in the coun­try,” Wong said.