NADALEEN SINGH

To­ba­go has re­ceived more than $2.7 bil­lion in this year's fis­cal pack­age, to cope with the chal­lenges of tourist ar­rivals.

So said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira in the 2009/2010 bud­get, pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

"In sup­port of the peo­ple of To­ba­go, there­fore, the cen­tral gov­ern­ment will in the next year, pro­vide to­tal bud­getary re­sources to the As­sem­bly in the or­der of $2,268.6 mil­lion," she said.

"For­eign in­vestors will be grant­ed con­di­tion­al li­cences on sat­is­fac­tion of pre­de­ter­mined cri­te­ria while await­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals which will en­able them to com­mence con­struc­tion.

"The ob­jec­tive is to re­duce the pro­cess­ing time for the grant of the li­cences."

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don is sat­is­fied with the amount al­lo­cat­ed to To­ba­go in the fis­cal pack­age.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion, Lon­don said there were ini­tia­tives in the al­lo­ca­tion that were en­cour­ag­ing and the fund­ing was sat­is­fac­to­ry. "I think gen­er­al­ly be­yond the ques­tion of fund­ing which al­though less than last year is not in­ad­e­quate...I am quite heart­ened by some of the ini­tia­tives and some of the dis­cus­sion," Lon­don said.

Com­ment­ing on the con­struc­tion of Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal, he said he's hope­ful that it would be com­plet­ed by the third quar­ter of next year.

THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Ash­worth Jack said he was not pleased with the funds al­lo­cat­ed for To­ba­go.

"Al­though it is said in the bud­get that tourism is the main­stay of To­ba­go's econ­o­my, there was very lit­tle in­cen­tive as it re­lates to tourism in To­ba­go," he said. "In fact most of the new ho­tel rooms, as you would have no­ticed, would be built in Trinidad like the Carl­ton Sa­van­nah, but there have been not one men­tion of ad­di­tion­al rooms in To­ba­go or even in­cen­tives."