Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

In a span of three years, the Gov­ern­ment’s spend­ing on lo­cal gov­ern­ment has in­creased by over 200 per cent.

In 2021, the Gov­ern­ment spent $138,805,850 mil­lion on lo­cal gov­ern­ment ser­vices through the coun­try’s 14 cor­po­ra­tions. In 2022, its spend­ing in­creased by 125 per cent to $216,626,182 mil­lion. For fis­cal 2023, the es­ti­mate was $389,284,000 mil­lion.

Dur­ing his mid-year bud­get re­view, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­creased the sum to the cor­po­ra­tions by $112,294,500 mil­lion for the fis­cal 2023 al­lo­ca­tion to move from $389,284,000 mil­lion to $501,578,500 mil­lion, an in­crease of 29 per cent.

That is an over­all in­crease in spend­ing of 129 per cent from 2022 to 2023.

Ac­cord­ing to a break­down of the spend­ing pro­vid­ed to the Sun­day Guardian by the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Faris Al-Rawi, the largest al­lo­ca­tion went to the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion. The mid-year re­view was on May 10.

What the da­ta shows

1. The PoS City Cor­po­ra­tion’s 2023 es­ti­mat­ed al­lo­ca­tion is $76,174, 600 mil­lion. It moved from an al­lo­ca­tion of $32,500,000 mil­lion for fis­cal 2023 to an in­crease of $43,674,600 mil­lion, a 134 per cent in­crease–a stark dif­fer­ence from its 2021 al­lo­ca­tion of $13,972,401 mil­lion.

2. The San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived a $18,483,900 in­crease for fis­cal 2023 for a to­tal al­lo­ca­tion of $30,900,00 mil­lion. In 2022 it re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of $12, 416, 100. The cor­po­ra­tion was al­lo­cat­ed a fur­ther $8,906,400 mil­lion dur­ing the mid-year re­view.

3. The al­lo­ca­tion made to the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion in­creased from $10,957,333 mil­lion in 2021 to $18,286,100 mil­lion in 2022 to $38,500,000 mil­lion in 2023. It re­ceived a 14 per cent in­crease of $5,487,000 at the mid-year re­view to take the fi­nal sum to $43,987,000 for fis­cal 2023.

4. Af­ter two years of the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceiv­ing small al­lo­ca­tions (in 2021 it was al­lo­cat­ed $7, 088,770 mil­lion (the low­est sum to any cor­po­ra­tion), and in 2022 it was al­lo­cat­ed $8,155,000 mil­lion (the sec­ond small­est al­lo­ca­tion)–that fig­ure rose to $27,900,000 mil­lion for fis­cal 2023. That is a 242 per cent in­crease of $19,745,000 mil­lion. It was al­lo­cat­ed a fur­ther $2, 399, 420 mil­lion dur­ing the mid-year re­view.

5. In 2022, the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived the small­est al­lo­ca­tion of $6, 342, 988. In 2023, the al­lo­ca­tion in­creased by $17,462,132 mil­lion to $23,500,000 mil­lion, a 270 per cent in­crease. It re­ceived a fur­ther al­lo­ca­tion of $2, 313,000 mil­lion at mid-year.

6. The Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived the sec­ond largest al­lo­ca­tion dur­ing the mid-year re­view of $17, 443, 576 mil­lion to take its 2023 fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion to $45,743, 576 mil­lion.

7. The Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion re­ceived the small­est mid-year in­crease of $1,400,000 mil­lion, a five per cent in­crease from $28,155,000 to $29,555,000.

8. The av­er­age sum al­lo­cat­ed to the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, and the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion was $22,000,000 for fis­cal 2023. They all re­ceived fur­ther al­lo­ca­tions of just over three mil­lion dur­ing the mid-year re­view.

Al-Rawi: It takes cash to care

Al-Rawi, re­spond­ing to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, said that it takes “cash to care” and that is why prop­er­ty tax is a crit­i­cal part of the re­form pack­age.

He ex­plained that the mis­sion of state ex­pen­di­ture is to trans­form com­mu­ni­ties as quick­ly and mean­ing­ful­ly as pos­si­ble. The mis­sion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, he said, was to have lo­cal gov­ern­ment de­vel­op­ment

“The mon­ey would have been spent on drainage, roads, soil sta­bil­i­sa­tion, and ma­jor re­pairs. These con­tracts would have been giv­en at a com­mu­ni­ty lev­el to ben­e­fit the peo­ple of that com­mu­ni­ty. What the na­tion­al clean-up cam­paign did was give me a look through­out Trinidad and what need­ed to be done,” he said.

On the ques­tion that de­spite the mil­lions spent peo­ple still lack ac­cess to ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture and ser­vices, he re­spond­ed: “Peo­ple de­serve bet­ter. But I main­tain it takes cash to care. For ex­am­ple, all cor­po­ra­tions would have re­quest­ed sums to man­age their needs for the year. But what they would have re­ceived would be less than what they re­quest­ed. So that is why prop­er­ty tax is a crit­i­cal part of the re­form pack­age. The prop­er­ty tax would bridge the gap of what they need.”

Local Government Figures

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form

As it stands, the Gov­ern­ment pro­vides an al­lo­ca­tion for the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment.

In Bud­get 2023, that was iden­ti­fied as $1.887 bil­lion.

Al-Rawi said that most of that sum al­lo­cat­ed was to cov­er re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture with a small­er sum al­lo­cat­ed to the de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme. But that will change when the re­form is op­er­a­tionalised.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert had said in bud­get 2023, that a sig­nif­i­cant part of that re­form would be that res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax­es are al­lo­cat­ed by law for use by the 14 lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions for the de­vel­op­ment and main­te­nance of their re­spec­tive re­gions.

“We en­vi­sion that Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Bod­ies in the pro­posed new sys­tem will be high­ly ac­count­able and re­spon­sive or­gan­i­sa­tions, ground­ed in the busi­ness, en­vi­ron­men­tal, cul­tur­al, ed­u­ca­tion­al, and so­cial fab­ric of their com­mu­ni­ties. We are firm in our be­lief that lo­cal gov­ern­ment should be giv­en more, rather than less, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and au­thor­i­ty, and as such, a plat­form for mean­ing­ful re­form of lo­cal gov­ern­ment has been for­mu­lat­ed with the ob­jec­tive of cre­at­ing a mod­ern, ef­fi­cient, prop­er­ly re­sourced, and proac­tive lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem,” he had said.

“The on­go­ing Val­u­a­tion of Prop­er­ties ex­er­cise be­ing con­duct­ed by the Val­u­a­tions Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance is specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to ad­dress the prob­lem of in­ad­e­quate fund­ing for the main­te­nance and de­vel­op­ment of in­fra­struc­ture in lo­cal gov­ern­ment dis­tricts, by re­serv­ing and al­lo­cat­ing Res­i­den­tial Prop­er­ty Tax­es for the ex­clu­sive use of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Bod­ies, thus pro­vid­ing them with a re­li­able and reg­u­lar ded­i­cat­ed stream of in­come,” Im­bert had ex­plained.

Two weeks ago, Im­bert told Par­lia­ment on the Val­u­a­tion of Land (Amend­ment) Bill, 2023, that four Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Bod­ies in Trinidad could col­lect up to $198 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax­es a year when all prop­er­ties in those cor­po­ra­tions have been val­ued us­ing the an­nu­al rental val­u­a­tion method­ol­o­gy.

“Based on prop­er­ties that have al­ready been reg­is­tered, I can say that the Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro, when all res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties have been val­ued, will be in re­ceipt of $44 mil­lion. The Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of Pe­nal/Debe, when all prop­er­ties in that re­gion have been val­ued and tax­es paid, will get $35 mil­lion a year. The Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co, be­ing one of the more pop­u­lat­ed cor­po­ra­tions, will get $67 mil­lion a year. The Bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas is es­ti­mat­ed to get $52 mil­lion from prop­er­ty tax,” Im­bert had said.

He had said the mon­ey the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions col­lect was not “chick feed or peanuts,” but a sub­stan­tial rev­enue stream that will be used to pro­vide ser­vices such as garbage col­lec­tion and drain clean­ing.

Al-Rawi told the Sun­day Guardian that af­ter hav­ing brought the leg­is­la­tion and had it passed when he was at­tor­ney gen­er­al, he was now in charge of its im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has not for­mal­ly an­nounced a date for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, but he has to do so with­in the next three months.

Both par­ties are al­ready screen­ing can­di­dates.