Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia

In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Be­fore every Gen­er­al Elec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, com­pet­ing par­ties hop­ing to form the next gov­ern­ment present man­i­festos de­tail­ing goals they in­tend to achieve if elect­ed to pow­er.

With a gen­er­al elec­tion im­mi­nent, Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk take a deep­er look at the roadmap the rul­ing PNM pre­sent­ed to the pop­u­la­tion ten years ago and ex­am­ined mea­sur­able goals and achieve­ments dur­ing their tenure.

Lead­ing up to the Au­gust 10th, 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment par­ty pre­sent­ed its man­i­festo “The Way For­ward.” As the win­ning man­i­festo, it was the doc­u­ment to guide gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy over the PNM’s next five years in of­fice.

The man­i­festo had 12 sub-cat­e­gories list­ed.

Those ex­am­ined: To­ba­go, Cre­ative and Cul­tur­al In­dus­tries, Sup­port­ing Vul­ner­a­ble Groups, En­er­gy, Sports Tourism, Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, Man­u­fac­tur­ing, Hous­ing, Pro­cure­ment, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Works and Trans­port, and Cre­at­ing a Dig­i­tal So­ci­ety.

How­ev­er, agri­cul­ture was not ex­am­ined be­cause the cat­e­go­ry did not list spe­cif­ic, mea­sur­able goals.

Of the mea­sur­able goals in the 12 sub-cat­e­gories, less than half, 42 per cent, of ini­tia­tives were im­ple­ment­ed, 42 per cent were not im­ple­ment­ed and 16 per cent were par­tial­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

The cat­e­go­ry with the most un­met goals was ‘Cre­at­ing a Dig­i­tal So­ci­ety,’ which failed to meet 13 of its 18 list­ed tar­gets. That’s a non-im­ple­men­ta­tion rate of 72 per cent.

The cat­e­go­ry with the most com­plet­ed goals was ‘En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries,’ which met sev­en of its nine tar­gets. An im­ple­men­ta­tion rate of 78 per cent.

To­day, Guardian Me­dia con­tin­ues its look at the par­ty’s man­i­festo ini­tia­tives.

Ini­tia­tives that were

im­ple­ment­ed/goals met:

Pro­cure­ment - One goal met

• Af­ter an eight-year de­lay, in April 2023, the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act was passed in par­lia­ment. The Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Sim­pli­fied Pro­cure­ment) Reg­u­la­tions, 2024 was signed in­to law, with amend­ments, on April 5, 2024.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry- Four goals com­plet­ed

• Pro­cure­ment of a new state-of-the-art na­tion­al CCTV sys­tem.— A new Na­tion­al CCTV Sys­tem, with 2,400 cam­eras, was in­stalled in 2022.

• Com­mis­sion­ing of the con­struc­tion of two Cape Class Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels from Aus­tralia. The ves­sels ar­rived in T&T in 2021.

• In­vest­ment in fur­ther tech­nol­o­gy for po­lice ser­vice, in­clud­ing body cam­eras and tasers. TTPS award­ed a $25 mil­lion con­tract for ac­qui­si­tion of 3,000 body cam­eras in Sep­tem­ber. 1,120 po­lice of­fi­cers were pre­vi­ous­ly giv­en cam­eras but they have not been used as re­quired. Tasers were al­so ac­quired and are in use.

• Strength­en­ing of re­la­tion­ships with var­i­ous for­eign or­gan­i­sa­tions as­sist­ing T&T in its fight against transna­tion­al and do­mes­tic crime.

Par­tial im­ple­men­ta­tion - Two

• Re­struc­tur­ing of crit­i­cal units in the Po­lice Ser­vice, such as the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team, White Col­lar Crime Unit and So­cial Me­dia Mon­i­tor­ing Unit.—SORT was dis­band­ed af­ter Gary Grif­fith’s de­par­ture as com­mis­sion­er of po­lice. While a White-Col­lar Crime Unit was not es­tab­lished, the TTPS cre­at­ed a Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Unit.

• Launch of the CURE VI­O­LENCE pro­gramme to as­sist with me­di­a­tion and in­ter­ven­tion in com­mu­ni­ties with more preva­lent crime is­sues.—Project Build­ing Blocks, based on the CURE mod­el, was launched in 2020 and it was in ef­fect un­til 2022. It was stopped in 2022, but the pro­gramme was list­ed to restart in the 2024 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Min­istry of Works and Trans­port - Five goals com­plet­ed

• Wa­ter Taxi Walkover in PoS—Com­plet­ed in No­vem­ber 2020.

• Diego Mar­tin Over­pass project - Com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber 2023.

Two new state-of-the-art Fast Pas­sen­ger/Car Fer­ries are be­ing built in Aus­tralia and will be de­liv­ered by the end of 2020 - De­liv­ered and in op­er­a­tion.

A com­pre­hen­sive Na­tion­al Drainage Plan is be­ing pre­pared - The plan was de­vel­oped.

Elec­tron­ic ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion sys­tem is be­ing rolled out - launched in March 2022.

Par­tial im­ple­men­ta­tion - Six

San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front/La­dy Hailes Av­enue Up­grade

Com­ple­tion of Point Fortin High­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin (sched­uled for full com­ple­tion at end of 2020) - The Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin was com­mis­sioned in Oc­to­ber 2023. The high­way was called the Archibald-De Leon High­way af­ter for­mer na­tion­al foot­ballers War­ren Archibald and Leroy De Leon. Two por­tions of the high­way in Fyz­abad and Vance Riv­er re­main in­com­plete, while a por­tion along Mos­qui­to Creek needs re­pair.

Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to Man­zanil­la - The project be­gan in 2018 but was not com­plet­ed.

Va­len­cia to To­co Sin­gle Lane High­way - The project be­gan and was planned to be fin­ished by 2021 but has not been com­plet­ed.

Widen­ing of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way - On­go­ing, but not yet com­plet­ed. The project start­ed in Jan­u­ary 2024 and had an ini­tial com­ple­tion date of Au­gust 2024. In De­cem­ber, Min­is­ter in the Works and Trans­port Min­istry Richie Sookhai promised that the project would be com­plet­ed by the end of 2024. Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said poor weath­er caused the com­ple­tion date to be de­layed.

Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion on the Moru­ga Road to up­grade to first-class stan­dard - The Gov­ern­ment said the project should be com­plet­ed in 2025.

CRE­AT­ING A DIG­I­TAL ECON­O­MY - Four goals com­plet­ed

The PNM will en­sure that all pub­lic en­ti­ties utilise an e-Pro­cure­ment plat­form.

We will re­move all tax­es on com­put­ers, mo­bile and dig­i­tal equip­ment, cell phones, soft­ware and ac­ces­sories - Tax­es on elec­tron­ics were re­moved in Sep­tem­ber 2020.

Pro­vide tax cred­its to busi­ness­es that in­vest in tech start-ups and new tech busi­ness­es - Im­ple­ment­ed in 2022. Com­pa­nies are giv­en a 50% tax ex­emp­tion on the first $100,000 of charge­able in­come for its first year and for the first $200,000 for the sec­ond year of op­er­a­tion.

Pro­vide tax cred­its to busi­ness­es who cre­ate em­ploy­ment in the tech in­dus­try - Im­ple­ment­ed in 2022. Ex­pen­di­ture in­curred in cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment in a tech­nol­o­gy in­dus­try, where the em­ploy­ees com­prise a ma­jor­i­ty of young peo­ple, is tax de­ductible, and an al­lowance equal to 150% of the ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture in­curred in re­la­tion to the cre­ation of such em­ploy­ment is al­so avail­able, up to a max­i­mum of $3 mil­lion. Man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies are al­so en­ti­tled to a re­duc­tion in Cor­po­ra­tion Tax, name­ly to 25%, on the first $100,000 that is ex­pend­ed on in­vest­ments in projects re­lat­ing to in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, digi­ti­sa­tion, and tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment, to ad­vance growth in the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try.

Par­tial Im­ple­men­ta­tion - One

Im­ple­men­ta­tion of sys­tems that sup­port on­line learn­ing, re­mote work and e-com­merce will be ac­cel­er­at­ed

CRE­ATIVE AND CUL­TUR­AL IN­DUS­TRIES - Five com­plet­ed goals

Grow the lo­cal film in­dus­try by strength­en­ing the pro­duc­tion ex­pen­di­ture re­bate pro­gramme

The Car­ni­val Mu­se­um - Opened in March 2021.

Steel­pan Man­u­fac­tur­ing - The Mu­si­cal In­stru­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go Com­pa­ny (MITTCO) was cre­at­ed in 2020. A steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty was opened in Au­gust 2022.

Con­tin­ue to pro­vide di­rect fi­nan­cial sup­port to artistes and cre­atives

Pro­mote and pro­vide sup­port for in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pro­tec­tion

DI­VER­SI­FI­CA­TION - One com­plet­ed goal

Ex­pand cur­rent for­eign ex­change win­dows for ex­porters and im­porters of es­sen­tial items - Forex win­dow was re­struc­tured. In No­vem­ber, Ex­im­Bank’s forex win­dow re­opened with US$25 mil­lion in month­ly al­lo­ca­tions.

Par­tial im­ple­men­ta­tion - One

Re­duce tax rates by 5% for sig­nif­i­cant ex­porters - In Jan­u­ary 2024, an ex­emp­tion from busi­ness levy on rev­enue earned by a man­u­fac­tur­er from ex­port sales was ef­fect­ed. Busi­ness levies are paid at a rate of 0.6% on gross sales or re­ceipts. For com­pa­nies in­volved in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, the Gov­ern­ment in­tro­duced a one-time cred­it for man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies that in­vest in new ma­chin­ery, pro­duc­tion lines or new equip­ment, up to a max­i­mum cred­it of $50,000.

SUP­PORT­ING VUL­NER­A­BLE GROUPS: So­cial ser­vices de­liv­ery - Three com­plet­ed goals

Im­ple­ment poli­cies im­prov­ing the lives of women and chil­dren, such as the Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy on Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment and the Na­tion­al Child Pol­i­cy.

Sup­port schools and day­care fa­cil­i­ties and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties.

Fund do­mes­tic vi­o­lence shel­ters, tran­si­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties, and strate­gies to end gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

Par­tial im­ple­men­ta­tion - One

Pro­vide sup­port for fe­male-head­ed and sin­gle-fa­ther house­holds - A school sup­plies and book grant of $1,000 was made avail­able to suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants in the 2025 Bud­get. The grant was avail­able to those who met the cri­te­ria, in­clud­ing house­holds with in­comes of $10,000 or less.

MAN­U­FAC­TUR­ING - One com­plet­ed goal

Im­ple­ment a tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions Tax Cred­it - Com­pa­nies whose core busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty is tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tion and digi­ti­sa­tion are sub­ject to cor­po­ra­tion tax at a rate of 50% of the stan­dard rate: on the first TTD$100,000 of charge­able in­come for in­come year 2022 and on the first TTD$200,000 of charge­able in­come for in­come year 2023.

Par­tial im­ple­men­ta­tion - Two

Im­ple­ment a Na­tion­al Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme - Par­tial­ly im­ple­ment­ed. In 2022, 50 stu­dents were se­lect­ed for a Na­tion­al Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme for the Wood and Wood Prod­ucts Man­u­fac­tur­ing Sub-sec­tor.

The PNM will sup­port the scrap iron in­dus­try by pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal sup­port and reg­u­la­to­ry and in­cen­tive frame­work - In No­vem­ber, Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSI­DA) pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son said he was ready to go to “war” to save the lo­cal in­dus­try. In De­cem­ber, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon met with Fer­gu­son to dis­cuss mat­ters af­fect­ing the scrap met­al in­dus­try.

Un­able to quan­ti­fy suc­cess - One

Im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness - The World Bank Group 2020 Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness Re­port ranked Trinidad and To­ba­go 105 out of 190 coun­tries in ease of do­ing busi­ness – down nine places since 2016. The re­port was dis­con­tin­ued in 2021 af­ter the re­lease of an in­de­pen­dent re­port de­tail­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the 2020 and 2018 re­ports, in­clud­ing the ma­nip­u­la­tion of da­ta. Dur­ing the last five years, Am­cham T&T has called on Gov­ern­ment on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness in the coun­try. Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon has claimed that the Gov­ern­ment has im­proved the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

EN­ER­GY AND EN­ER­GY IN­DUS­TRIES - Sev­en com­plet­ed goals

Ne­go­ti­ate an even greater share of en­er­gy rev­enues. In 2022, the Gov­ern­ment signed new agree­ments con­cern­ing re­struc­tur­ing At­lantic LNG with bpTT, Shell and the NGC. In De­cem­ber 2023, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny se­cured a 10% stake in an agree­ment for a new com­mer­cial struc­ture for At­lantic LNG.

Re­view the Pe­tro­le­um Tax­es Act - Amend­ed

Re­view the ap­pli­ca­tion of the Sup­ple­men­tal Pe­tro­le­um Act - in­crease the thresh­old for small on­shore pro­duc­ers to $75 per bar­rel for fis­cal 2021 and 2022 - A sus­tain­abil­i­ty in­cen­tive for the SPT was al­so in­creased for ma­ture or small ma­rine oil fields to a 25% dis­count.

Ac­tive­ly ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties in the re­gion­al en­er­gy mar­ket

Im­ple­ment an En­er­gy Con­ser­va­tion and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy Pol­i­cy and Ac­tion Plan

In­tro­duce tax cred­its to en­cour­age in­vest­ment in car­bon cap­ture and stor­age, and en­hanced oil re­cov­ery - In 2024, Car­bon cap­ture and stor­age and en­hanced oil re­cov­ery al­lowance. An al­lowance equal to 30% of the ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture in­curred in­vest­ing in car­bon cap­ture and stor­age and en­hanced oil re­cov­ery is avail­able, up to a max­i­mum of TTD$500,000.

Pro­mote the use of elec­tric ve­hi­cles and hy­brid ve­hi­cles - tax­es waived on all qual­i­fy­ing ve­hi­cles.

HOUS­ING - Two com­plet­ed goals

Hous­ing start-up grants up to $35,000 - the home con­struc­tion sub­sidy of­fers grants up to $50,000

PNM will en­sure that up to 20% of all state hous­ing con­struc­tion projects are re­served for small and medi­um con­struc­tion projects.

Par­tial im­ple­men­ta­tion: One

Squat­ter reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion and home own­er­ship - “For Fis­cal 2025, we have set a tar­get of build­ing 500 new res­i­den­tial units. This un­der­scores our com­mit­ment to ad­dress­ing hous­ing needs across the coun­try,” Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said in Feb­ru­ary at a hand­ing-over func­tion. Ear­li­er this year, the Land Set­tle­ment Agency, re­fer­ring to 2015 da­ta, con­firmed there are at least 60,000 squat­ting house­holds on state lands in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Hous­ing im­prove­ment and re­pair grants up to $35,000–Home im­prove­ment grant is lim­it­ed to $15,000, while im­prove­ment sub­sidy is up to $20,000, ac­cord­ing to the Hous­ing Min­istry’s web­site.

SPORTS TOURISM, LO­CAL TOURISM AND RECRE­ATION - One com­plet­ed goal

De­vel­op a Sports Tourism Mas­ter Plan - A Sport Tourism Sub-Pol­i­cy was pub­lished in Ju­ly, 2021

TO­BA­GO - Two com­plet­ed goals

Fa­cil­i­tate the con­struc­tion of a new and mod­ern air­port ter­mi­nal at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port - Im­ple­ment­ed. The con­struc­tion of the new air­port ter­mi­nal is ap­proach­ing com­ple­tion.

Fa­cil­i­tate the up­grade of the ex­ist­ing air­port ter­mi­nal at Crown Point - Im­ple­ment­ed.

Par­tial Im­ple­men­ta­tion - One

Im­ple­ment an ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive coastal sur­veil­lance pro­gramme - the Com­pre­hen­sive Na­tion­al Coastal Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme pi­lot project be­gan in Oc­to­ber 2020.