The Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs (MSYA) will re­ceive $328,652,400 for re­cur­rent spend­ing in 2025-2026.

This amount, out­lined in the Draft Es­ti­mate of Ex­pen­di­ture from Min­is­ter of Fi­nance De­ven­dranath Tan­coo’s na­tion­al bud­get, is a slight de­crease from what was pre­vi­ous­ly al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment for 2024-2025, which re­ceived a re­vised es­ti­mat­ed to­tal of $338,623,184.

How­ev­er, the Sport Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SporTT), the MSYA’s de­liv­ery arm, will see its al­lo­ca­tion raised by $27 mil­lion to $147 mil­lion.

Among oth­er ar­eas to be fund­ed from the 2025-2026 al­lo­ca­tion are $1,000,000 to the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba and $1,300,000 to in­door are­nas and the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre in Tacarigua.

The over­all 2025-2026 al­lo­ca­tion in­cludes a sup­ple­men­tal $10,700,000 in cap­i­tal in­jec­tion for de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes from the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund and $38,000,000 of de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme ex­pen­di­ture fund­ed from the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund.

On Mon­day (Oc­to­ber 13) in par­lia­ment, Min­is­ter Tan­coo de­liv­ered a $59 bil­lion na­tion­al bud­get in his maid­en bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion since be­ing sworn in­to of­fice in May. Min­is­ter Tan­coo de­clared that sports are a dri­ver of uni­ty and na­tion­al pride. As well as stat­ing plans for con­tin­ued re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works at com­mu­ni­ty swim­ming pools in Mal­oney, Mor­vant, Tu­na­puna, Biche, and Rio Claro, along­side up­grades at na­tion­al sta­dia, Tan­coo al­so promised, “New com­mu­ni­ty grounds and the elite ath­letes' gym at Tacarigua will en­hance per­for­mance and health. Schol­ar­ships through UTT and part­ner­ships with GC Fos­ter in Ja­maica and In­dia are de­vel­op­ing coach­ing and sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing women’s crick­et.”

The Samuel Badree Crick­et Acad­e­my fa­cil­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) in San Fer­nan­do will serve as a na­tion­al train­ing base. Pro­grammes such as Ja­va Crick­et, which serve 2,000 youths with these hands and with prac­ti­cal and en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills. Ten new com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, with full ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty fea­tures, will open in fis­cal 2026,” Tan­coo as­sured.  

In 2024, the na­tion­al bud­get al­lo­ca­tion to sports in­clud­ed sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment aimed at com­mu­ni­ty and elite-lev­el sports de­vel­op­ment. Through the min­istry, an al­lo­ca­tion of $39 mil­lion was giv­en to sup­port com­mu­ni­ty sports, which al­so aid­ed lo­cal sport­ing clubs and or­gan­i­sa­tions in host­ing and man­ag­ing events.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the bud­get yes­ter­day, Hay­den Mitchell, the Ten­nisTT pres­i­dent who was once a di­rec­tor on the board of SporTT, called for the ex­e­cu­tion of the promis­es be­ing made.

He said, “First, let me com­mend the gov­ern­ment for their at­tempt to achieve bal­ance in terms of eq­ui­ty. But I need more de­tails, and this is for the big­ger bud­get, so I'll leave that to the econ­o­mists. How­ev­er, for sports, there were very few de­tails giv­en, and I think I may have to look to see when the ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter makes his con­tri­bu­tion for me to get the de­tails. But a cou­ple of the things that they men­tioned were al­ready in train from the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, so when they spoke about the gyms and so on, those were from the last ad­min­is­tra­tion.  

“So I am quite cu­ri­ous to see what new mea­sures they’re go­ing to put in place, and I will get those de­tails, I guess, when the ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter makes his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get."

In a Guardian ar­ti­cle on Sun­day (Oc­to­ber 12), Mitchell had hoped for a sig­nif­i­cant part of the bud­get to be hand­ed to the Sports Com­pa­ny, which he said could be used for sports and sports de­vel­op­ment through the Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs).