Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions are where na­tion­al pol­i­cy meets dai­ly life. They main­tain lo­cal roads and drains, sup­port san­i­ta­tion and pub­lic health, man­age waste and help sus­tain com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties. When they lack the re­sources to do that work, res­i­dents feel the con­se­quences through flood­ing, dam­aged roads, ne­glect­ed pub­lic spaces and in­ad­e­quate ser­vices.

That is why the 2027 de­vel­op­ment es­ti­mates de­mand clear an­swers.

The fig­ures show a com­bined al­lo­ca­tion of $219.02 mil­lion for the 14 cor­po­ra­tions, down from $271.633 mil­lion in the orig­i­nal 2026 pro­vi­sions. The sev­en Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions face a com­bined re­duc­tion of $49.55 mil­lion, com­pared with about $3.063 mil­lion for the sev­en Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions. These fig­ures do not, by them­selves, prove po­lit­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion. But the dis­par­i­ty rais­es le­git­i­mate ques­tions about the cri­te­ria used to de­ter­mine al­lo­ca­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment should an­swer those ques­tions open­ly.

It should pub­lish the for­mu­la used to de­ter­mine al­lo­ca­tions, iden­ti­fy the needs and projects con­sid­ered and ex­plain sig­nif­i­cant year-to-year changes. Cit­i­zens should be able to see how fund­ing de­ci­sions re­late to pop­u­la­tion, in­fra­struc­ture needs, project readi­ness and the cost of de­liv­er­ing ser­vices.

If cor­po­ra­tions re­ceived less be­cause of un­spent al­lo­ca­tions, in­com­plete projects or oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions, the ev­i­dence should be made pub­lic and the method­ol­o­gy ap­plied con­sis­tent­ly. Trans­paren­cy is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant when dif­fer­ences are large enough to gen­er­ate ac­cu­sa­tions of po­lit­i­cal favouritism.

Trans­paren­cy must al­so ex­tend to the cor­po­ra­tions them­selves. They should reg­u­lar­ly re­port what they re­ceive, what they spend, which projects are com­plet­ed and what re­mains out­stand­ing. Prop­er re­port­ing and time­ly au­dits would help cit­i­zens de­ter­mine whether pub­lic mon­ey is de­liv­er­ing pub­lic val­ue. It would al­so strength­en ac­count­abil­i­ty among those en­trust­ed with man­ag­ing these re­sources.

Port-of-Spain de­serves par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion. As the cap­i­tal, its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties ex­tend well be­yond its res­i­den­tial pop­u­la­tion. Gov­ern­ment of­fices, busi­ness­es, na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, vis­i­tors and ma­jor events all de­pend on a func­tion­ing city. Ad­e­quate­ly main­tain­ing its roads, drainage, san­i­ta­tion, pub­lic spaces and mu­nic­i­pal fa­cil­i­ties is there­fore a na­tion­al ne­ces­si­ty, not a favour to a may­or, par­ty or com­mu­ni­ty.

The same prin­ci­ple must ap­ply every­where. Cit­i­zens should nev­er have to won­der whether the con­di­tion of their road, drain or mar­ket de­pends on which po­lit­i­cal par­ty con­trols their cor­po­ra­tion. Equal­ly, dif­fer­ences in al­lo­ca­tions should not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be treat­ed as ev­i­dence of po­lit­i­cal bias. They may re­flect le­git­i­mate dif­fer­ences in needs, projects or pre­vi­ous ex­pen­di­ture.

Pub­lish­ing the cri­te­ria and sup­port­ing ev­i­dence is the surest way to set­tle that ques­tion and build pub­lic con­fi­dence in the al­lo­ca­tion process.

Par­ti­san ex­changes can­not sub­sti­tute for trans­paren­cy. The res­i­dents who de­pend on re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in­clude sup­port­ers of every par­ty and cit­i­zens who sup­port none.

The test is sim­ple: does pub­lic fund­ing al­low cor­po­ra­tions to serve their com­mu­ni­ties fair­ly, ef­fec­tive­ly and ac­count­ably?

The Gov­ern­ment should ex­plain how al­lo­ca­tions were de­ter­mined, and every cor­po­ra­tion should demon­strate how pub­lic funds are spent.

That is not a par­ty de­mand. It is the min­i­mum stan­dard cit­i­zens de­serve.