Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in his Na­tion­al Bud­get Pre­sen­ta­tion on Monday, de­liv­ered a 54.012 bil­lion bud­get that is set to bring re­lief to many in the com­ing days and months. Sports clubs and com­mu­ni­ties are al­so set to be im­pact­ed hand­some­ly with a $39 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to dri­ve an ini­tia­tive that would fo­cus on the par­tic­i­pa­tion of women and girls in sports, as well as a plan to im­prove the coun­try’s elite ath­letes.

Im­bert, al­so promised that T&T will soon repli­cate the Ja­maican mod­el in swim­ming, ath­let­ics, foot­ball and cy­cling, cour­tesy of the part­ner­ship with the GC Fos­ter Col­lege of Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Sport in Ja­maica.

Im­bert, whose pre­sen­ta­tion last­ed more than four hours, said: “ I have al­lo­cat­ed a to­tal of $39 mil­lion in 2024 to al­low for the fos­ter­ing and pro­mo­tion of com­mu­ni­ty sports. This al­lo­ca­tion will be used to as­sist lo­cal sport­ing clubs and or­gan­i­sa­tions in their host­ing and man­age­ment of com­mu­ni­ty sport­ing events and com­pe­ti­tions, spe­cial­ized train­ing at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el and the pro­cure­ment of sport­ing equip­ment for use in com­mu­ni­ties.”

“We are stream­lin­ing the de­vel­op­ment of sport. We are cre­at­ing a spe­cial Sport­ing Com­mis­sion to over­see a plat­form for the nec­es­sary fund­ing of events and ath­letes and al­so to hold re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for help­ing the var­i­ous na­tion­al bod­ies, schools and com­mu­ni­ties de­vel­op long-term plans and struc­tures for the growth of sports. In this new frame­work, the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T will lim­it its work to the main­te­nance of na­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties.”

Last year, sport was the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of $541,962,000, how­ev­er, Im­bert in the gov­ern­ment’s dri­ve for over­all de­vel­op­ment, al­so shelled out sig­nif­i­cant amounts to­wards youth de­vel­op­ment, in­clu­sive of a $19.5 mil­lion in 2024 for a com­mu­ni­ty art and craft ini­tia­tive, the re­fur­bish­ment of youth de­vel­op­ment and ap­pren­tice cen­tres at Chatham, Per­sto Praesto and El Do­ra­do to equip the at-risk youth with tech­ni­cal, vo­ca­tion­al and oth­er skills to spur in­no­va­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for $15 mil­lion, and the con­struc­tion of a new cen­tre at Waller­field for $20 mil­lion, among many oth­er youth de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives.

In re­sponse to the Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment, Az­im Bas­sarath, pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board said the gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment will reap huge div­i­dends: “From what I have heard, I am ex­treme­ly pleased to hear that some al­lo­ca­tions have been made for com­mu­ni­ty sports. If you go back to ear­li­er this year, I would have made a call for as­sis­tance for our Na­tion­al Pre­mier League clubs, the top eight clubs in the coun­try for as­sis­tance, so that when they play in three-day crick­et, which is played over two days and three days, we made a call for an al­lo­ca­tion to be made to them so that they can play the crick­et over three days.”

“ We feel that if we don’t play crick­et over three days, we will not be de­vel­op­ing our crick­eters as we should. We will not be able to com­pete at the re­gion­al lev­el, be­cause the re­gion­al lev­el is four days, and if we play two-day crick­et, we can’t com­pete play­ing four-day crick­et.”

“So we made that ap­peal and we are hap­py to hear some monies were al­lo­cat­ed for clubs in the com­mu­ni­ty. And al­so, what that will do, is as­sist the clubs and I think more peo­ple will come to­wards sports, and what will hap­pen is that we’re go­ing to take a lot of peo­ple off the streets of T&T with that al­lo­ca­tion,” Bas­sarath ex­plained.

Mean­while, Hay­den Mitchell, the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T pres­i­dent said while he wel­comes the as­sis­tance his main con­cern is the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the ini­tia­tives.

“I knew they were re­fur­bish­ing a lot of these fa­cil­i­ties down south, but Skin­ner Park for me was a ma­jor is­sue be­cause there are ten­nis courts down there and they re­al­ly didn’t fin­ish those ten­nis courts, that for me was a bit of a chal­lenge, but the good thing is that they are re­fur­bish­ing fa­cil­i­ties.”

“What I want­ed to see more is that they spoke about tourism and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, but the tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ties in terms of sports tourism that ex­ist in Trinidad. We have all these as­sets, the foot­ball sta­di­um, the aquat­ic cen­tre the cy­cling cen­tre, and now they’re get­ting the hock­ey field fin­ish. But there needs to be a com­pre­hen­sive plan on how you’re mon­etis­ing, or what is your sports tourism mas­ter plan. How are you go­ing to roll it out, be­cause you have key NG­Bs that are able to push sport tourism, but how do you bring them to­geth­er, or else what will hap­pen is that it will be a pie in the sky,” Mitchell ex­plained.