In a new pod­cast called Au­to Fo­cus broad­cast ear­li­er this week, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly chief sec­re­tary, Far­ley Chavez Au­gus­tine, de­fined what the rul­ing par­ty in To­ba­go means by au­ton­o­my.

“What we re­al­ly mean (by au­ton­o­my) is that we want the op­por­tu­ni­ty to build our own home and to man­age our own home. Au­ton­o­my for us in To­ba­go does not mean sep­a­ra­tion from Trinidad. What au­ton­o­my re­al­ly means for the av­er­age To­bag­on­ian is the abil­i­ty to man­age our so­cio, cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic af­fairs to the ex­tent that we pro­vide pros­per­i­ty and growth and de­vel­op­ment for all To­bag­o­ni­ans; in a way that al­lows To­ba­go to have eq­ui­ty or to be equal with Trinidad as a part­ner in this union called Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Imag­ine, for a mo­ment, that our an­ces­tors left us this beau­ti­ful prop­er­ty called Trinidad and To­ba­go that we must man­age. But cur­rent­ly, To­ba­go finds it­self liv­ing down­stairs in the same fam­i­ly home as Trinidad. But the acreage of land that we have al­lows To­ba­go to build its own home, just next door in the same piece of prop­er­ty.

“All To­bag­o­ni­ans are say­ing when we say au­ton­o­my is that we just want the abil­i­ty to build our own home called To­ba­go, build it the way we want, man­age it the way we want, and con­tin­ue to share neigh­bourly ties, fa­mil­ial ties with Trinidad.”

It just so hap­pens that the home anal­o­gy used by Far­ley Chavez Au­gus­tine to ex­plain au­ton­o­my to a To­ba­go au­di­ence is per­fect to analyse what he re­al­ly wants from Trinidad.

In ex­tend­ing the home anal­o­gy, let us imag­ine a three-mem­ber house­hold with par­ents named Trinidad and an 18-year-old son named To­ba­go, who has just fin­ished his CAPE ex­ams. They live in a man­sion on a half-acre prop­er­ty in Good­wood Park, which is lo­cat­ed in the Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy in Trinidad.

While he was a stu­dent at sec­ondary school, the par­ents, Dr and Mrs Trinidad, pro­vid­ed their son, To­ba­go, with every­thing he could want, in­clud­ing a gen­er­ous al­lowance for food, books, en­ter­tain­ment and oth­er things. The joint in­come of the Trinidads is about $54,000 a month and the agree­ment is that To­ba­go’s al­lowance would be $2,600 a month, which is about 4.8 per cent of their in­come.

The par­ents want To­ba­go to con­tin­ue his stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the cost of which they have com­mit­ted to sub­sidise, with the un­der­stand­ing that To­ba­go will con­tin­ue to live at home and trav­el to his class­es at UWI.

To­ba­go, on the oth­er hand, in­sists that he has no in­ter­est in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, but he as­pires to build a house on the Good­wood Park prop­er­ty next to the Trinidads’ man­sion.

To­ba­go wants to be able to con­tin­ue liv­ing in the man­sion while build­ing his house but tells his par­ents that be­cause he is 18, he must have a greater abil­i­ty to man­age his own af­fairs. To­ba­go wants to con­tin­ue re­ceiv­ing the gen­er­ous al­lowance from the Trinidads, but wants to be able to set his own rules: to go and come as he pleas­es with­out telling his par­ents any­thing; lime with his friends at the man­sion un­til dawn; not do any chores around the house and gen­er­al­ly live like a spoilt lo­cho off his par­ents, al­ways de­mand­ing more mon­ey from them.

Af­ter much ar­gu­ment on this is­sue, Dr and Mrs Trinidad lay down the law to To­ba­go:

—First­ly, if you want to con­tin­ue liv­ing in our house, re­ceiv­ing our al­lowance, eat­ing our ham, lamb and jam, but not con­tribut­ing much to the fam­i­ly pot, you will have to abide by our rules;

—Sec­ond­ly, if you do not like our rules and do not want to con­tin­ue your ed­u­ca­tion, you are free to make your way in the world, on your own dime, and with your sec­ondary-lev­el ed­u­ca­tion.

Far­ley’s prob­lem

I think what Far­ley Chavez Au­gus­tine wants from Trinidad, the coun­try, and not the par­ents, is to con­tin­ue re­ceiv­ing an in­creas­ing amount of mon­ey from the Trea­sury every year, while du­pli­cat­ing the T&T gov­ern­ment ap­pa­ra­tus in To­ba­go. That ap­pa­ra­tus would be an­swer­able to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly ad­min­is­tra­tion in Scar­bor­ough on­ly.

By du­pli­cat­ing the gov­ern­ment ap­pa­ra­tus of T&T, I am as­sum­ing that he wants a sep­a­rate ju­di­cia­ry, sep­a­rate po­lice, army, pris­ons, and fire ser­vices, dif­fer­ent arrange­ments for the in­ter-is­land fer­ry and air­craft trans­porta­tion and To­ba­go-run elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter ser­vices.

Un­der Far­ley Chavez Au­gus­tine’s plan for To­ba­go, the is­land would re­quire new in­de­pen­dent ser­vice com­mis­sions—ju­di­cial and le­gal, po­lice, pub­lic and teach­ing. The is­land would al­so re­quire a sep­a­rate Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor, Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion, Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion, etc.

Who is to pay for du­pli­cat­ing all of T&T’s pub­lic ser­vices in To­ba­go?

I ex­pect that Mr Far­ley Chavez Au­gus­tine thinks that Port-of-Spain would be will­ing to pay.

The amount of mon­ey To­ba­go gets from Trinidad is al­ready con­sid­er­able.

Spend­ing on To­ba­go

In de­liv­er­ing the 2025 bud­get in Par­lia­ment on Sep­tem­ber 30, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert out­lined the al­lo­ca­tion for To­ba­go, which has a pop­u­la­tion of about 65,000: The THA al­lo­ca­tion to­tals $2.599 bil­lion of which:

* $2.376 bil­lion is for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture;

* $205 mil­lion is for the De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme ex­pen­di­ture; and

* $18 mil­lion is for the URP and $9.2 mil­lion for CEPEP.

In ad­di­tion, be­yond the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to the THA, an ad­di­tion­al $678.5 mil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed to var­i­ous min­istries and state agen­cies to un­der­take and ex­e­cute ma­jor projects in To­ba­go in keep­ing with their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty un­der the sixth sched­ule of the THA Act 40 of 1996.

“In ad­di­tion, the To­ba­go air­bridge op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue to play a vi­tal role in main­tain­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Gov­ern­ment’s sub­sidi­s­a­tion of this ser­vice en­sures af­ford­abil­i­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty for all cit­i­zens. From Jan­u­ary 2020 to Ju­ly 2024, the ser­vice op­er­at­ed a to­tal of 38,087 flights, trans­port­ing 2.3 mil­lion pas­sen­gers, with the to­tal cost of the sub­sidy amount­ing to US$36.8 mil­lion,” said Im­bert.

The to­tal sub­sidy of US$36.8 mil­lion over the first sev­en months of this year, works out to be US$63.08 mil­lion ($429 mil­lion) for the 12 months of 2024.

In the 2023 bud­get, Mr Im­bert said the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice costs $200 mil­lion per year to sub­sidise, which does not in­clude the cap­i­tal cost of the two new fast fer­ries, which was close to $1 bil­lion.

So, in­clud­ing the re­cur­rent and cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture, the sixth sched­ule spend­ing and the in­ter-con­nec­tiv­i­ty sub­si­dies, the sub-to­tal is $3.90 bil­lion. Added to that sum must be the To­ba­go sub­si­dies on elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter, as well as the sub­sidy on the Cabo Star, which trans­ports goods from Trinidad to To­ba­go. Those three ad­di­tion­al sub­si­dies would take the ex­pen­di­ture on To­ba­go to an es­ti­mat­ed $4.5 bil­lion for the 2025 fi­nan­cial year.

Is­land’s rev­enue

In the Ju­ly 11 edi­tion of the Busi­ness Guardian, lo­cal econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James es­ti­mat­ed that the To­ba­go econ­o­my can gen­er­ate about $500 mil­lion in tax­es.

“This is be­cause the econ­o­my now pro­duces about $1.66 bil­lion, if we are to go by the fig­ures re­cent­ly pub­lished by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley in his lat­est bud­get state­ment. At a gen­er­al tax rate of 29 per cent, that gives tax­able ca­pac­i­ty of just un­der $500 mil­lion.

“It should be not­ed that about $214 mil­lion of those tax­es are cur­rent­ly col­lect­ed in To­ba­go. So, about $286 mil­lion is col­lect­ed by the agen­cies of the Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad.”

These fig­ures, James added, in­di­cat­ed that near 80 per cent of the mon­ey spent by the THA in To­ba­go is a trans­fer from Trinidad.

“When you add in the near­ly $1 bil­lion spent on oth­er Gov­ern­ment ser­vices by the Gov­ern­ment, the lev­el of de­pen­dence of To­ba­go on Trinidad in­creas­es to about 86 per cent of Gov­ern­ment spend­ing,” James said.

So, To­ba­go’s finest eco­nom­ic mind es­ti­mates that To­ba­go’s tax­able ca­pac­i­ty is about one per cent of the T&T’s rev­enue col­lec­tion and that To­ba­go de­pends on Trinidad for 86 per cent of the mon­ey spent on the small­er is­land. By my cal­cu­la­tion, To­ba­go con­sumes about eight per cent of T&T’s an­nu­al ex­pen­di­ture and wants more every year.

Would the $4.5 bil­lion that I es­ti­mate is spent by Trinidad on To­ba­go be more use­ful­ly spent on Trinidad?

With the ca­pac­i­ty to gen­er­ate on­ly $500 mil­lion in rev­enue from tax­es, ac­cord­ing to Dr James, could To­ba­go sur­vive with­out Trinidad?

Would Trinidad be bet­ter off in­de­pen­dent of To­ba­go?