Richard?Lord

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don says many peo­ple on the is­land are in sup­port of the es­tab­lish­ment of a San­dals ho­tel.

He made the com­ment dur­ing an in­ter­view fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's pre­sen­ta­tion of the $53 bil­lion 2017 Na­tion­al Bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who seemed to give the project his bless­ing dur­ing his speech.

"The San­dals project does send a very pow­er­ful sig­nal about where we want to go with the To­ba­go econ­o­my," Lon­don said.

Im­bert had told leg­is­la­tors ear­li­er that the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to the pro­posed es­tab­lish­ment of the San­dals Re­sort in To­ba­go, not­ing it would be a cat­a­lyst "for de­vel­op­ment and en­hance­ment of the tourism in­dus­try in To­ba­go and Trinidad."

He said the Gov­ern­ment was "cer­tain that a San­dals re­sort will at­tract oth­er tourism in­vest­ments in To­ba­go" and the re­sort "will pre­cip­i­tate the up­skilling of the work­force, boost agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and de­liv­er bet­ter and more ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing of To­ba­go, as well as Trinidad as pre­ferred tourism des­ti­na­tions."

He said the San­dals Re­sort had the po­ten­tial to pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic im­pact and nu­mer­ous ben­e­fits for res­i­dents of To­ba­go and Trinidad.

Lon­don point­ed out that tourism is go­ing to play a very crit­i­cal role in the de­vel­op­ment of the is­land "from the per­spec­tive of get­ting the (de­sired) for­eign ex­change, pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ment and en­sur­ing that To­ba­go and the coun­try re­mains vi­able."

Lon­don said, "This project is very crit­i­cal to To­ba­go's de­vel­op­ment (and) it is go­ing to be a cat­a­lyst for more de­vel­op­ment in the tourism sec­tor and im­prove­ment in the lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty in many oth­er sec­tors on the is­land.

"The THA and most of the ma­jor sec­tors in To­ba­go were high­ly sup­port­ive of the San­dals ven­ture," Lon­don said.

He said de­spite the cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, fis­cal 2017 can be very ex­cit­ing and pro­duc­tive for To­ba­go be­cause of the San­dals and oth­er projects.

Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance Joel Jack, who viewed Im­bert's speech with Lon­don, echoed the Chief Sec­re­tary's sen­ti­ments, in­sist­ing that the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion was ex­cel­lent. He said the "pre­scrip­tions out­lined in the pre­sen­ta­tion will au­gur well for not on­ly To­ba­go, but for all of Trinidad too."

The THA was al­lo­cat­ed $2.3 bil­lion in the bud­get. Im­bert said just over $2 bil­lion will be for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, $289 mil­lion for cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture and $20 mil­lion for the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme.

He said in ad­di­tion to that al­lo­ca­tion, "sig­nif­i­cant ad­di­tion­al funds have been al­lo­cat­ed to fa­cil­i­tate work in To­ba­go by gov­ern­ment min­istries un­der the THA Act."

Im­bert said, "The ad­di­tion­al bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion will as­sist in ad­dress­ing the chron­ic wa­ter cri­sis in south­west To­ba­go."