Gail Alexan­der

The per­for­mance of road re­pair com­pa­nies will now be prop­er­ly mon­i­tored, as Gov­ern­ment ex­pects “great things” from the agen­cies han­dling road re­pair, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and con­struc­tion since they’ve re­ceived a huge amount of fund­ing for this in the 2023 Bud­get.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­di­cat­ed this on Wednes­day in pi­lot­ing Sen­ate de­bate of the Bud­get, which he not­ed fo­cus­es more on in­fra­struc­ture than in pre­vi­ous years.

He al­so said Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to im­prove the com­plex law on il­le­gal quar­ry­ing—levy­ing and seiz­ing equip­ment—since per­sons who en­gage in that ac­tiv­i­ty “have been quite suc­cess­ful in courts to date” us­ing var­i­ous loop­holes and weak­ness­es in the law.

Im­bert said the 2023 Bud­get’s rev­enue is $4.5 bil­lion more than rev­enue for 2022. Among the Bud­get’s $57.5 ex­pen­di­ture is the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan (PSIP), which will fo­cus more—39 per cent— on in­fra­struc­ture than it did in pre­vi­ous years.

Some 31 per cent will go to­wards “spend­ing mon­ey on peo­ple,” 12 per cent on build­ing glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness and 17 per cent on de­liv­er­ing good gov­er­nance, he added.

The Point Fortin High­way is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed and com­mis­sioned in 2023. But Im­bert said fo­cus from such large projects will now shift to “or be com­ple­ment­ed by” road re­pair and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

In ad­di­tion to the Works Min­istry’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion, the min­istry is al­so re­ceiv­ing loan fi­nanc­ing for road up­grade projects via the PURE project with $250 mil­lion.

Since there was al­ready an ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ty for PURE, he said Works will have over $300 mil­lion for road re­pair/re­hab and land­slips.

The re­vived Sec­ondary Roads Im­prove­ment com­pa­ny has $200m for fo­cus­ing on neigh­bour­hood and sec­ondary roads, plus the min­istry al­so has $1 bil­lion de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme fund­ing.

“So, I’d think the var­i­ous agen­cies that have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, re­pair and road con­struc­tion in 2023 are very well fund­ed and we ex­pect great things from them in 2023,” Im­bert added.

He said there’s a “very am­bi­tious” Cap­i­tal De­vel­op­ment project to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and cre­ate jobs and in­come.

“I hope it will be re­alised. Cer­tain­ly, the Fi­nance Min­istry will be push­ing min­istries to use all fund­ing in the pro­gramme, which is very sig­nif­i­cant.”

He said the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block is al­so ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2024, while the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal will be re­fur­bished to pro­vide car­diac fa­cil­i­ties.

Im­bert said due to at­ten­tion on some Bud­get mea­sures, the ben­e­fits, which he de­tailed, were cloud­ed over. Among them, he cit­ed the per­son­al tax al­lowance, which will be watched care­ful­ly as it costs Gov­ern­ment $450m, but the­o­ret­i­cal­ly al­lows peo­ple more spend­ing ca­pac­i­ty.