The state-owned en­ti­ty that man­ages the coun­try’s school nu­tri­tion pro­gramme has re­ceived its largest bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion in at least tenyears.

Ac­cord­ing to the Draft Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture for 2023, which was laid in Par­lia­ment fol­low­ing Mon­day’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, the Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NS­D­SL) has been al­lo­cat­ed $270,746,800 for the 2023 fis­cal year.

This is an in­crease of $181.8 mil­lion from the amount the NS­D­SL re­ceived in 2022.

In fis­cal 2022, the NS­D­SL re­ceived $88.9m from the Gov­ern­ment.

The NS­D­SL’s al­lo­ca­tion fell be­low the $200m mark for the first time in the 2020 fis­cal year. In 2021, it record­ed its low­est al­lo­ca­tion over the ten year pe­ri­od when it re­ceived $12 mil­lion.

When the SNP is in full op­er­a­tion, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 54,000 break­fast meals and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 79,000 lunch­es are pro­vid­ed dai­ly to stu­dents at over 800 schools.

The ser­vice is de­liv­ered by 68 con­tract­ed cater­ers lo­cat­ed through­out Trinidad.

In Feb­ru­ary, dur­ing a Pub­lic Ac­counts En­ter­pris­es Com­mit­tee in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the pe­ri­od 2016 to 2019, NS­D­SL CEO Sta­cy Bar­ran said the pro­gramme cost $1.2 mil­lion.

From 2009 to 2013, the NS­D­SL ob­tained $1.7 bil­lion in gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions.

The NS­D­SL was in­cor­po­rat­ed as a lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny by Cab­i­net Minute No. 943 of May 16, 2002, to man­age the School Nu­tri­tion Pro­gramme on be­half of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

The NS­D­SL re­ports to the Min­istry of Fi­nance, with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion as the line min­istry.

One of the main ob­jec­tives of the School Nu­tri­tion Pro­gramme is to pro­vide a week­ly av­er­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly one-quar­ter and one-third of the Rec­om­mend­ed Di­etary Al­lowance of nu­tri­ents for chil­dren through the pro­vi­sion of break­fast and lunch re­spec­tive­ly.