The Gov­ern­ment’s move to fi­nal­ly grant ap­proval to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) to bor­row mon­ey on the lo­cal mar­ket to fi­nance To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment is “sat­is­fac­to­ry” says econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James.

James was re­act­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s 2019 Mid-year Bud­get Re­view, in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, that the THA will soon be giv­en per­mis­sion to bor­row.

“I in­tend to grant ap­proval in the very near fu­ture to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to raise loan fi­nanc­ing on the lo­cal mar­ket in the sum of $300 mil­lion for a num­ber of de­vel­op­ment projects, in­clud­ing health and sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties, hous­ing, roads and bridges, coastal pro­tec­tion and the THA’s in­no­v­a­tive “In­tel­li­gent Is­land” ICT project,” Im­bert said.

James said he was “sat­is­fied” by the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to “fi­nal­ly al­low the THA to bor­row... as the THA has the right to do so.”

How­ev­er, James had reser­va­tions about how the Gov­ern­ment ar­rived at the to­tal amount of funds ear­marked for bor­row­ing.

“There is a stan­dard ra­tio of your deficit be­ing about three to five per cent of the deficit of the out­put — GDP (Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct) and the over­all debt not to ex­ceed 60 per cent of the GDP...in the ab­sence of the GDP you can­not as­sess whether the $300 mil­lion is a pru­den­tial lim­it or not,” the econ­o­mist said.

He said the THA does not fol­low the Unit­ed Na­tion’s rules when it cal­cu­lates the is­land’s GDP.

James al­so ques­tioned the strat­e­gy be­hind the kinds of projects pro­posed for fi­nanc­ing.

“What is the fun­da­men­tal pur­pose of bor­row­ing? How are the parts of the project of the strat­e­gy for de­vel­op­ing To­ba­go as a fo­cal point for non-en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment? How are these projects con­tribut­ing to To­ba­go’s over­all de­vel­op­ment and are they part of the coun­try’s 2030 vi­sion?” James asked.

He said To­ba­go has the “best po­ten­tial to be the fo­cal point for non-en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try” and not­ed that “the projects we are bor­row­ing for must make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to that thrust.”

He said while he un­der­stood the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to as­sist in To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment, the THA al­so must de­fine its strat­e­gy for the is­land.

“We need to get from the THA its over­all plan to repo­si­tion To­ba­go with­in the con­text of the de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives and the Gov­ern­ment’s 2030 plan. If you look at Vi­sion 2030, you can’t see that plan,” James said.

He said this is ev­i­dent as the ex­pan­sion of the Arthur NR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port is spear­head­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

“It should re­al­ly be the THA hand in hand with the Gov­ern­ment on the ex­pan­sion project, not it be­ing spear­head­ed by Trinidad,” the econ­o­mist said.