Gov­ern­ment's al­lo­ca­tion to sports in yes­ter­day's na­tion­al bud­get has been wel­comed by a num­ber of Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NSOs).

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert de­liv­ered a $63 bil­lion dol­lar bud­get at Tow­er D of the Wa­ter­front in the midst of se­vere fi­nan­cial de­pres­sion caused by the fall­en oil and gas prices. How­ev­er he re­vealed that his gov­ern­ment will im­ple­ment pro­grammes and poli­cies that will en­cour­age all to take part in sports as a recre­ation; im­ple­ment poli­cies to see the emer­gence of more world cham­pi­on ath­letes and en­sure they gain in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion; fos­ter de­vel­op­ment of sports at schools and en­cour­age com­pe­ti­tion; es­tab­lish­ment of fa­cil­i­ties to meet world stan­dards; de­vel­op a sport brand for T&T and es­tab­lish a Sport In­sti­tute that will lead among oth­ers.

Among those em­brac­ing the sports al­lo­ca­tion were Olympic pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis, cy­cling head Robert Far­ri­er and Dr Allen Sam­my, ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) who all wel­comed the gov­ern­ment's plan.

Far­ri­er said the plan shows that gov­ern­ment has made sports a pri­or­i­ty. He ex­plained these ini­tia­tives will lead to build­ing of stronger com­mu­ni­ties and the pro­mo­tion of ath­letes to in­ter­na­tion­al world class stan­dards. "Poli­cies in sports al­ways tend to en­sure that there is in­tegri­ty and fair­ness in the process­es," Far­ri­er said.

He is hop­ing his or­ga­ni­za­tion gets a whop­ping $12 mil­lion which he said is need­ed ahead of an Olympic year. The TTCF in their last bud­get re­ceived $1.4 mil­lion which was 20 per­cent of the amount they had ap­plied for. Ac­cord­ing to Far­ri­er his as­so­ci­a­tion is aware that gov­ern­ment can­not do every­thing for NSOs but he said it is now crit­i­cal for gov­ern­ment to as­sist in ar­eas of mar­ket­ing and strate­gic plan­ning which would help them achieve ob­jec­tives and tar­gets.

Lewis was hap­py to see the in­tro­duc­tion of pro­grammes at schools, say­ing this was start­ed back in 2010 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) un­der the same PNM gov­ern­ment. "It is a ma­jor plus any­time you im­prove the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tors in Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and the TTOC will sup­port this ful­ly," Lewis said.

He added there seems to be a fo­cus on build­ing ca­pac­i­ty in sports es­pe­cial­ly at a time when sac­ri­fices have to be made. In the face of a bud­get which was pegged at US$40 per bar­rel in­stead of US$80 in pre­vi­ous years, Lewis said the time for lim­it­ing sports must come to an end as he has al­ways en­vi­sioned sports mak­ing a great im­pact on the na­tion­al econ­o­my through sports tourism.

He ex­plained al­so that sports will help with so­cial ills and is al­so a means of en­hanc­ing the hu­man re­sources in coun­tries. "In spite of the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges we will not see sports go down as there are so many ar­eas to make a great im­pact on the na­tion. In fact we at the TTOC still hold firm to TT achiev­ing 10 or more gold medals at the Rio Olympic Games next year," Lewis said.

Dr Sam­my said it is good that gov­ern­ment has not di­vert­ed from the fo­cus on elite ath­letes and the de­vel­op­ment of hu­man re­sources as a whole.

"When a na­tion is in cri­sis the first area they sac­ri­fice is sports, so I look for­ward to this not hap­pen­ing over the five-year term," Sam­my said.