The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has agreed to foot a $16,800 dai­ly bill for the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point to open as late as 1.30 am, with hopes that it will dri­ve more lo­cal tourists to the is­land.

The move will come at the ex­pense of Vir­gin At­lantic, how­ev­er, as the THA plans to redi­rect funds from the sub­ven­tion the air­line gets to pay the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty $5.6 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly for the ex­tend­ed open­ing hours.

This was just one of many mea­sures an­nounced by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine as he de­liv­ered an am­bi­tious, near four-hour long $3.97 bil­lion THA Bud­get in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day.

Oth­er key mea­sures in­clud­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Bank, $60 mil­lion in fund­ing to as­sist busi­ness­es, the con­struc­tion of over 1,000 hous­es in this term of of­fice, a push for the re­moval of the Land Li­cens­ing Regime to al­low more di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment and a move to­ward the con­struc­tion of two ho­tels that can add 850 rooms to the is­land’s stock.

The THA will al­so open an “out­post” on Pem­broke Street, Port-of-Spain, to as­sist To­bag­o­ni­ans to do busi­ness eas­i­er and al­so to push Par­lia­ment for the es­tab­lish­ment of full au­ton­o­my through re­vised To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bills.

Au­gus­tine told the As­sem­bly that in their bid to get the econ­o­my to re­cov­er, the THA was seek­ing to have the air­port opened lat­er, but said when he spoke to the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, they in­di­cat­ed that it was too ex­pen­sive.

The sum for the ex­tend­ed hours, he told re­porters lat­er, was US$600 per hour or rough­ly TT$16,800 per day.

He de­scribed the 12 flights that Caribbean Air­lines pro­vides dai­ly as “pal­try” and said that ho­tels re­main at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

“We pro­pose to foot the bill from our air­lift sup­port ser­vices to keep the To­ba­go air­port open un­til 1.30 am. Caribbean Air­lines will now have no ex­cus­es. The move­ment of Caribbean Air­lines be­tween both is­lands is an es­sen­tial ser­vice and it is the du­ty of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to fund this op­er­a­tion. I am us­ing this plat­form to say to Caribbean Air­lines, please re­turn to full ca­pac­i­ty,” Au­gus­tine said.

In his post-Bud­get news con­fer­ence, Au­gus­tine ex­plained that both Vir­gin At­lantic and British Air­ways (BA) fly to To­ba­go but that BA was do­ing much bet­ter on the route.

“Cur­rent­ly, we are pay­ing tens of mil­lions to Vir­gin and this comes out of our bud­get every year,” he said, ex­plain­ing fur­ther that the an­nu­al $5.6 mil­lion it would take to open the air­port lat­er would come out of the funds that the THA pays to have Vir­gin At­lantic fly to the is­land.

Seek­ing 6.9% of na­tion­al Bud­get

Au­gus­tine pred­i­cat­ed the Bud­get on the up­per lim­it of the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion’s rul­ing on what To­ba­go should be al­lo­cat­ed, an amount of 6.9 per cent of the na­tion­al Bud­get.

He ar­gued that in the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bill, the Gov­ern­ment was promis­ing to give To­ba­go 6.8 per cent, which he said, shows that the Gov­ern­ment could af­ford it.

“If they were so in­ter­est­ed and love To­ba­go, it would be no prob­lem to give us 6.9 per cent,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said re­cent da­ta in­di­cat­ed that To­ba­go’s GDP (gross do­mes­tic prod­uct) fell 7 per cent from 2019 to 2020 and rose 4 per cent in 2021.

How­ev­er, he said the over­all da­ta point­ed to an un­der­per­form­ing econ­o­my in need of ma­jor growth.

Core in­fla­tion fig­ures, he said, were around 3.5 per cent in March, which “sig­nals the need to boost our de­fence against in­fla­tion and de­fend the pop­u­la­tion from the ef­fects of cost of liv­ing ris­es.”

To­tal li­a­bil­i­ties were $738.1 mil­lion in De­cem­ber 2021 and when con­tin­gent li­a­bil­i­ties for the $215.8 mil­lion bond fi­nanc­ing that is payable by 2027 were added, to­tal li­a­bil­i­ties amount­ed to a whop­ping 57 per cent of To­ba­go’s es­ti­mat­ed GDP in 2021.

It is for this rea­son he an­nounced an ag­gres­sive dri­ve to at­tract more di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment, part of which will in­volve the THA call­ing on the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to get rid of the Land Li­cens­ing regime, through which pro­pos­als for land own­er­ship must be ap­proved.

“It is in­im­i­cal to To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my ef­forts to have a min­is­ter sit­ting in an of­fice in Port-of-Spain with­out a clue of To­ba­go’s needs, de­cid­ing who can in­vest and where they can in­vest,” Au­gus­tine said.

Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, the THA will first de­vel­op a com­pre­hen­sive spa­cial plan to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment and sen­si­tive ar­eas, be­fore it des­ig­nates places for di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment.

He told re­porters lat­er that the fear that Ger­mans were buy­ing up all the land in To­ba­go was proven un­true and that most of the land buy­ers were from Trinidad.

He is al­so call­ing for the re-es­tab­lish­ment of To­ba­go desks at for­eign mis­sions and said the THA will go on a dri­ve for mem­bers of the To­ba­go di­as­po­ra to in­vest in the is­land.

A di­as­po­ra home­com­ing event will be or­gan­ised to co­in­cide with the 2023 Her­itage Fes­ti­val.

To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Bank

Au­gus­tine told the As­sem­bly that dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place to­ward the es­tab­lish­ment of a To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Bank, in­clud­ing with the Cen­tral Bank, which is will­ing to of­fer tech­ni­cal sup­port.

He said it will mo­bilise in­vest­ment cap­i­tal to fund eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion and pro­grammes of the As­sem­bly, fund fi­nan­cial in­dige­nous en­ti­ties, pro­vide land bank­ing ser­vices for To­bag­o­ni­ans, and sub­sume all To­ba­go busi­ness fi­nanc­ing and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes with­in its op­er­a­tions.

A Trade Unit will al­so be es­tab­lished with­in the Di­vi­sion of Trade in the As­sem­bly to help busi­ness­es with the ex­pan­sion of the trade and mar­ket ac­cess, there­by boost­ing their busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties.

To boost tourism, he said pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place with two ma­jor in­vestors that could col­lec­tive­ly re­sult in an in­vest­ment of $1.5 bil­lion in the To­ba­go econ­o­my if it ma­te­ri­alis­es, adding 850 rooms in the next three years.

The two in­vest­ments, he not­ed, would pro­vide 1,050 jobs dur­ing con­struc­tion and more than 400 jobs when they are op­er­a­tionalised.

Two high­ly-mech­a­nised mega-farms of no less than 100 acres each will be es­tab­lished and 1,050 hous­ing units will be built in the first term at a rate of 200 units a year, start­ing in the sec­ond quar­ter of fis­cal 2023.

An­oth­er pro­pos­al is for all new pub­lic hous­ing de­vel­op­ments and ex­ist­ing THA fa­cil­i­ties to be sup­ple­ment­ed, in part, by re­new­able so­lar en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ties and the next fleet of THA ve­hi­cles will be elec­tric. Pub­licly-owned carparks will all have charges for elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

The Bud­get was themed “To­wards a smarter, green­er more au­tonomous To­ba­go,” with re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture at $3.07 bil­lion, the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme at $900 mil­lion, URP at $59.5 mil­lion and CEPEP at $53.1 mil­lion.

The de­bate will re­sume next Tues­day.