Less de­vel­oped Cari­com coun­tries are be­ing asked to con­sid­er ap­peal­ing to oil-rich Guyana to take on part of the role which T&T as­sumed in 2007 when it was felt T&T was flush with mon­ey, and it could share the mon­ey with T&T’s Cari­com broth­ers.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who sug­gest­ed this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, said, how­ev­er, that this would have to be a Cari­com de­ci­sion, not Gov­ern­ment’s.

He was re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip David Lee’s query about a $105 mil­lion Bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for the Cari­com De­vel­op­ment Fund and Lee’s sub­se­quent ob­ser­va­tion that Guyana is now on an oil growth path.

Im­bert said the fund was start­ed when oil was US$106 a bar­rel and gas was US$13.

“There was a view that be­cause T&T was in a very good po­si­tion in those days, it should as­sist the less for­tu­nate mem­ber states with­in Cari­com. But that has not been sus­tain­able since then and from time to time we pro­vide fund­ing for this fund,” Im­bert said.

“But there are ques­tions about it as to whether the T&T Gov­ern­ment should pro­vide fund­ing of this mag­ni­tude to that fund. It’s re­al­ly some­thing that is sub­ject of dis­cus­sion from time.”

He said Lee made a good point on Guyana.

Im­bert al­so con­firmed prop­er­ty tax field as­ses­sors have been prop­er­ly iden­ti­fied. Some $7.6 mil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed for their short-term em­ploy­ment to com­plete prop­er­ty as­sess­ments for prop­er­ty tax col­lec­tion.

Im­bert said the plan for a group pen­sion plan for dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers isn’t ful­ly op­er­a­tional at this time. More fund­ing was al­so al­lo­cat­ed for Cus­toms over­time, as im­porters were re­quest­ing goods to be processed quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Fund­ing was al­so al­lo­cat­ed for scan­ners for the Port Au­thor­i­ty and for up­grades of con­tain­er ex­am­i­na­tion at the PoS and Pt Lisas ports.

Funds are al­lo­cat­ed for the Cli­co/CIB mat­ter and for HCU liq­ui­da­tion—the lat­ter which, he said, is tak­ing a very long time to do.