GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

In fis­cal 2023, gov­ern­ment in­tends to spend $6.164 bil­lion on its Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP). The mon­ey is ex­pect­ed to go to­wards projects to de­vel­op sev­er­al sec­tors in­clud­ing food se­cu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic growth, so­cial de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Of the 6.164 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed, $3,178.9 mil­lion or 51.6 per cent will be sourced from the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund (CF) for pro­grammes and projects to be im­ple­ment­ed by cen­tral Gov­ern­ment min­istries, agen­cies and de­part­ments, lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). The bal­ance of $2,985 bil­lion or 48.4 per­cent will be dis­bursed from the In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund (IDF) for ini­tia­tives be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by Spe­cial Pur­pose State En­ter­pris­es (SPSEs), ac­cord­ing to the PSIP’s 2023 bud­get doc­u­ment.

In fis­cal 2022, a to­tal bud­get­ed al­lo­ca­tion of $4.2 bil­lion was used to fi­nance ini­tia­tives un­der the PSIP of which $2.499 bil­lion or 60 per cent was pro­vid­ed un­der the CF and $1.7 or 40 per­cent was fi­nanced un­der the IDF.

The PSIP, the doc­u­ment ex­plained, will be fi­nanced through gen­er­al rev­enue to­talling $5802.6 mil­lion (94.1 per cent), while $361.7 mil­lion (5.8 per cent) will be drawn from ex­ter­nal sources such as loans and grants.

The ma­jor source of loan fi­nanc­ing will be drawn from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) of $360.7 mil­lion for ma­jor projects in­clud­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty of the reg­is­trar gen­er­al’s de­part­ment, en­hance­ment of the sin­gle elec­tron­ic win­dow, health ser­vices sup­port pro­gramme, na­tion­al wa­ter sec­tor trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme, mul­ti-phase waste wa­ter re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme - Phase 1, waste wa­ter net­work ex­pan­sion and ur­ban up­grad­ing and re­vi­tal­iza­tion pro­gramme.

Eco­nom­ic Re­struc­tur­ing and Trans­for­ma­tion

Ac­cord­ing to the 2023 PSIP, $13.5 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed for the dis­so­lu­tion of ex­ist­ing trade pro­mo­tion agen­cies and the es­tab­lish­ment of a Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency (TIPA) project to in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy and co­or­di­na­tion in trade pro­mo­tion.

A pro­vi­sion of $400 thou­sand was al­lo­cat­ed for in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion and fa­cil­i­ta­tion ini­tia­tives by the Min­istry of Trade.

Gov­ern­ment will al­so con­tin­ue to sup­port in­vest­ment, plac­ing fo­cus on in­creas­ing for­eign and lo­cal di­rect in­vest­ment through mea­sures like pri­ori­tis­ing ex­ist­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in tar­get­ed sec­tors and con­tin­u­ing en­gage­ment of tar­get­ed in­vestors gen­er­at­ed through ob­jec­tives like the T&T in­vest­ment fo­rum and so­cial me­dia cam­paigns.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in fis­cal 2023, $400 thou­sand will be al­lo­cat­ed for grant fund­ing to stim­u­late and sup­port in­vest­ment in new and ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion as a com­pet­i­tive­ness en­hance­ment tool for en­ter­pris­es.

In terms of the con­tro­ver­sial scrap iron in­dus­try, the doc­u­ment not­ed this has emerged as an im­por­tant con­trib­u­tor to eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and there­fore, $0.6 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to strength­en the ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work gov­ern­ing the in­dus­try tak­ing in­to ac­count in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices and “unique na­tion­al cir­cum­stances.”

Agri­cul­ture and

food se­cu­ri­ty

The PSIP re­vealed that an in­vest­ment of $159.4 mil­lion will be pro­vid­ed in fis­cal 2023, to con­tin­ue works in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

Ini­tia­tives in­clude agri­cul­tur­al land man­age­ment; boost­ing agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion; pro­vid­ing agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess and up­grad­ing key in­fra­struc­ture and fish land­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

Fish­eries will al­so re­ceive an in­vest­ment of $6.8 mil­lion in fis­cal 2023 to up­grade land­ing fa­cil­i­ties at Blan­chisseuse, La Fil­lette, Bonasse, Cumana, Erin, Car­li Bay, Clax­ton Bay and Mara­cas.

Man­u­fac­tur­ing

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue sup­port the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to be­come more glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive, pro­duc­tive and in­no­v­a­tive through ad­vanced tech­nolo­gies and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly prac­tices.

Hence, an in­vest­ment of $118.2 mil­lion will be pro­vid­ed in fis­cal 2023 for sev­er­al key ini­tia­tives.

The Trade Min­istry will al­so be pro­vid­ed with $2.0 mil­lion for the Scale UpTT busi­ness ac­cel­er­a­tor pro­gramme.

Al­so, the doc­u­ment not­ed that Gov­ern­ment will in­vest a fur­ther $63.0 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

On oth­er in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment Gov­ern­ment will in­vest $4.0 mil­lion for the growth of in­dus­tries through new tech­nolo­gies and ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able work­ing spaces with the req­ui­site sys­tems to fa­cil­i­tate in­dus­tri­al ex­pan­sion.

Al­so, al­lo­ca­tion of $4.0 mil­lion will be pro­vid­ed for the con­tin­ued im­ple­men­ta­tion of the yacht­ing pol­i­cy.

In­no­va­tion, Re­search

and De­vel­op­ment”

Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to sup­port CARIRI through sus­tained in­vest­ment in the ex­plo­ration of new prod­ucts to in­crease the na­tion­al in­come.

There­fore, $0.7 mil­lion will be pro­vid­ed for CARIRI’s ini­tia­tive; Re­cy­cling of Tyre Crumbs in­to As­phalt Mix­es.

In ad­di­tion, $1.5 mil­lion will be in­vest­ed for a li­brary in­for­ma­tion man­age­ment sys­tem for CARIRI in 2023.

Fur­ther, $2.3 mil­lion will be giv­en to NI­HERST for mea­sures like its “Teach Me” pro­gramme to sup­port re­mote teach­ing by de­vel­op­ing skills in­clud­ing ar­eas of dig­i­tal pre­sen­ta­tion and de­vel­op­ing a men­tor­ing sys­tem.

So­cial Pro­tec­tion

The PSIP not­ed that in keep­ing with Gov­ern­ment’s goals to en­hance so­cial pro­tec­tion pro­grammes and pro­mote the re­silience of vul­ner­a­ble groups, $58.1 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed for so­cial ser­vices.

Ben­e­fi­cia­ries will in­clude the el­der­ly, dif­fer­ent­ly-abled, chil­dren, sur­vivors of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and oth­er mar­gin­alised groups.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MS­DFS) will get $4.0 mil­lion for tran­si­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties for so­cial­ly dis­placed peo­ple.

A range of ser­vices will be of­fered at the fa­cil­i­ties in­clud­ing as­sess­ment and eval­u­a­tion, med­ical screen­ing, needs as­sess­ment, coun­selling, train­ing and oth­er re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes, the doc­u­ment not­ed.