ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly will cut over­seas trav­el ex­pens­es as part of a broad­er ini­tia­tive to make nec­es­sary “sac­ri­fices” in or­der to man­age bud­get con­straints.

This was re­vealed by Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts yes­ter­day. Roberts made the an­nounce­ment af­ter a two-day THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil re­treat.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence, she said that the THA’s 2024 fis­cal year will pri­ori­tise con­serv­ing re­sources for the de­vel­op­ment of the is­land. 

In the past three years, the THA spent over $11.6 mil­lion on over­seas trips.

Dur­ing a ple­nary sit­ting in May, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ex­plained that this cov­ered trav­el for THA work­ers, pub­lic ser­vants, stu­dents, and even the Mi­nor­i­ty Leader. Au­gus­tine men­tioned that this amount was just a bit high­er than what the Prime Min­is­ter spent on trav­el alone dur­ing the same pe­ri­od.

As mem­bers of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots and PNM crit­i­cised the spend­ing, Au­gus­tine de­fend­ed it, say­ing it ben­e­fit­ted To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, the de­ci­sion to cut of­fi­cial over­seas trav­el is now part of the repri­ori­ti­sa­tion of the 2024-2025 fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion to the THA.

The THA has been al­lo­cat­ed $2.6 bil­lion from cen­tral Gov­ern­ment—down from the re­quest­ed $3.9 bil­lion—and it now aims to save an es­ti­mat­ed $292 mil­lion.

Roberts ex­plained, “The over­all strat­e­gy ba­si­cal­ly is to re­strict ex­pen­di­ture to 2023 lev­els and that would save us about $292 mil­lion and it re­al­ly means that we have to sac­ri­fice some things on the re­cur­rent side.

“And I want To­bag­o­ni­ans to un­der­stand this sac­ri­fice would mean that we can­not do cer­tain things on the re­cur­rence side in or­der to bol­ster and ac­cel­er­ate To­ba­go de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme and un­lock our de­vel­op­ment po­ten­tial.”

Aside from trim­ming over­seas trav­el, the THA Fi­nance Sec­re­tary out­lined oth­er bud­get-tight­en­ing mea­sures such as re­duc­ing ex­pens­es on mi­nor equip­ment, pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties, of­fice sup­plies, and ma­te­ri­als. Through these mea­sures, she said, the THA can max­i­mize economies of scale and ne­go­ti­ate bet­ter terms with sup­pli­ers, aim­ing to make each dol­lar stretch fur­ther.

Some of the top pri­or­i­ty projects in 2025 in­clude a new loan guar­an­tee pro­gramme to sup­port small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs), par­tic­u­lar­ly in the fish­ing, tourism, and agri­cul­ture sec­tors.

“We’ll start with $12 mil­lion and grad­u­al­ly in­crease this fund to as­sist our SMEs.”

The THA al­so plans to im­prove tourism ameni­ties by restor­ing the Fort King George light­house, en­hanc­ing the Store Bay Beach fa­cil­i­ty, and re­vi­tal­is­ing the Ca­lyp­so Rose Boule­vard with new bench­es and a walk of fame.