Gail Alexan­der

It is prov­ing quite dif­fi­cult to fi­nance the pur­chase of free phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, in­clud­ing in the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP) and all the oth­er free ser­vices that are avail­able in the health sec­tor—and to find the $500 mil­lion that’s need­ed to sup­ple­ment the Health Min­istry’s al­lo­ca­tion for the rest of the fis­cal year is go­ing to prove to be very dif­fi­cult.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­di­cat­ed this at yes­ter­day’s meet­ing of Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee at the Red House, Port-of-Spain.

This dealt with the sup­ple­men­ta­tion to 12 di­vi­sions of the fund­ing which they re­ceived in the 2024 Bud­get. The sup­ple­men­ta­tion be­ing giv­en now to­tals $2,328,099,600.

The En­er­gy Min­istry re­ceived the high­est sup­ple­men­ta­tion—$570,800,000, while the Health Min­istry re­ceived the third high­est—$495,286,000. In the 2024 Bud­get, Health re­ceived the sec­ond-high­est min­istry al­lo­ca­tion—$7.409 bil­lion.

Op­po­si­tion UNC MPs grilled min­is­ters on what the sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing in the 12 ar­eas will be used for.

Dur­ing ques­tion­ing by UNC MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed that $392 mil­lion had been out­stand­ing to Nipdec for pay­ment of drugs and sup­ple­men­tal funds be­ing sought would pro­vide $202.5m for part pay­ment for the out­stand­ing in­voic­es for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh told UNC MP Dr Rai Rag­bir there has been no dis­rup­tion in the pro­vi­sion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

The fund­ing cov­ers CDAP, with $1.4 mil­lion for HPV vac­cines and $555.9 mil­lion for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. The break­down of the lat­ter in­clud­ed $132 mil­lion (on­col­o­gy drugs), $20.6 mil­lion (HIV drugs), $40.5 mil­lion (an­tibi­otics), $60 mil­lion (NCD drugs), $48.7 mil­lion (psy­chi­a­try), and $84.8 mil­lion (non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals).

On ques­tions by MPs Bo­doe and Dave Tan­coo about how the sup­ple­men­tal funds will be spent in oth­er ar­eas, in­clud­ing ar­rears, Deyals­ingh said the sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing will go a very long way and as in­voic­es come in, they may car­ry over in­to an­oth­er fis­cal year.

Im­bert then in­ter­ject­ed, “I’d just like to make a gen­er­al point: you re­alise we’re sup­ple­ment­ing the Min­istry of Health by al­most $500 mil­lion—al­most half a bil­lion dol­lars.

“Now the Min­istry of Health al­ready re­quires sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey every year ... an­oth­er $5 mil­lion or so... It is prov­ing quite dif­fi­cult to fi­nance the pur­chase of free phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and all the oth­er free ser­vices that are avail­able in the health sec­tor. So I just want Mem­bers (of Par­lia­ment) to un­der­stand this. We be­lieve this is im­por­tant, we have to do it, but to find that $500 mil­lion is go­ing to prove to be very dif­fi­cult.”

Im­bert added, “If one ac­tu­al­ly looks at what is be­ing spent on the health sec­tor over the years, it has been in­creas­ing ex­po­nen­tial­ly.”

Im­bert not­ed that when he was Health Min­is­ter “some 20-odd years ago”, the bud­get was $1 bil­lion and in the time years since then, it had in­creased to over $5 bil­lion.

“So un­der­stand: we as a coun­try spend huge amounts of mon­ey on health­care and it’s some­thing we need to look at to make sure we’re get­ting val­ue for mon­ey and so on,” Im­bert added.

Sums al­lo­cat­ed in the $2.3B sup­ple­men­ta­tion are:

• SER­VICE COM­MIS­SIONS – $4,140,000

• TO­BA­GO HOUSE of AS­SEM­BLY – $50M

• OF­FICE Of THE AT­TOR­NEY GEN­ER­AL AND LE­GAL AF­FAIRS MIN­ISTRY – $124,300,000

• ED­U­CA­TION MIN­ISTRY – $144,200,000

• HEALTH MIN­ISTRY – $495, 286,000

• LABOUR MIN­ISTRY – $130,538,600

• PUB­LIC UTIL­I­TIES MIN­ISTRY – $527,800,000

• EN­ER­GY/EN­ER­GY IN­DUS­TRIES MIN­ISTRY – $570,800,000

• RUR­AL DE­VEL­OP­MENT AND LO­CAL GOV­ERN­MENT – $95,027,500

• WORKS AND TRANS­PORT MIN­ISTRY – $155,677,000

• FOR­EIGN & CARI­COM AF­FAIRS MIN­ISTRY – $9,182,500.

• TOURISM, CUL­TURE & THE ARTS MIN­ISTRY – $21,048,000.

TO­TAL – $2,328,099,600