The Road Map to Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee has iden­ti­fied some 527 State con­struc­tion projects—at a to­tal cost of $3.2 bil­lion—to restart once the COVID-19 re­stric­tions are rolled back.

Those fig­ures are con­tained in the com­mit­tee’s first re­port which Guardian Me­dia re­ceived Sat­ur­day. Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, has not been able to in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy if this is, in fact, the fi­nal first doc­u­ment.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a fi­nal ver­sion of the first re­port is ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed over to the Prime Min­is­ter. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was con­tact­ed to find out when the fi­nal re­port is ex­pect­ed and when he is go­ing to present it to the pub­lic, but there was no re­sponse.

The com­mit­tee de­tailed a mul­ti-pronged ap­proach to jolt­ing the econ­o­my and the coun­try af­ter the COVID-19 re­stric­tions are eased with a spe­cif­ic fo­cus on three pri­or­i­ties—ad­dress­ing and mit­i­gat­ing the hard­ship in­flict­ed by COVID-19, restart­ing the econ­o­my, and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for sus­tained re­cov­ery.

Un­der the head­ing "In­creas­ing spend­ing in the con­struc­tion sec­tor", the com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the "ac­cel­er­a­tion of shov­el-ready projects which con­ser­v­a­tive­ly ex­ceed $600 mil­lion."

The plan is to speed up the time frame for reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals to re­duce wait time for projects to be­gin.

Un­der the same con­struc­tion ban­ner, the com­mit­tee al­so iden­ti­fied 72 projects with a $1.8 bil­lion price tag to start in 2021.

Un­der the head­ing, "pro­vid­ing ap­pro­pri­ate re­lief to busi­ness en­ter­pris­es par­tic­u­lar­ly MSMEs (Mi­cro, Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es)", the com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment ac­cel­er­ate the VAT re­turns pay­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the VAT re­fund fig­ures con­tained in the re­port, the Gov­ern­ment iden­ti­fied over 3,800 busi­ness­es en­ti­tled to less than $250,000 in VAT re­funds. Re­fund­ing that group car­ries a pro­ject­ed cost of $260 mil­lion. The re­port did not say how many busi­ness­es had re­funds that ex­ceed­ed $250,000 but owed less than $500,000, but pegged that cost at $260 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, busi­ness­es that re­quired VAT re­funds that were greater than $500,000 were al­so not es­tab­lished, but the pay­out cost was es­ti­mat­ed at $200 mil­lion.

It al­so called for the sus­pen­sion of VAT on tech­nol­o­gy-re­lat­ed prod­ucts to in­crease the move to digi­ti­sa­tion.

The com­mit­tee al­so rec­om­mend­ed mak­ing US dol­lars more ac­ces­si­ble to the lo­cal non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the Gov­ern­ment moved to mo­bilise in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­sources to ad­dress the crit­i­cal de­mands cre­at­ed by COVID-19 and sourced TT$2 bil­lion from five var­i­ous mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies

*US$20 mil­lion from the World Bank

*US$130 mil­lion from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB)

*US$150 mil­lion from the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca (CAF)

The Gov­ern­ment is al­so ne­go­ti­at­ing a fur­ther TT$3.4 bil­lion in bud­getary sup­port from "oth­er ex­ter­nal sources." It has al­so raised TT$500 mil­lion on the do­mes­tic mar­ket to pay for the in­creased goods and ser­vices for the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) and to set­tle aged trade payables in the Health Sec­tor.

"Cu­mu­la­tive­ly, the in­creased Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture to com­bat COVID-19 has been ring-fenced through a com­pre­hen­sive so­cial, fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic sup­port pack­age of mea­sures," the re­port not­ed.

"The fis­cal deficit for FY (Fi­nan­cial Year) 2020, which was orig­i­nal­ly es­ti­mat­ed at $5.3 bil­lion, is now pro­ject­ed to ex­pand to $15.5 bil­lion, $10.2 bil­lion high­er than was en­vis­aged in the FY 2020 Bud­get to en­sure the health and per­son­al well-be­ing of our pop­u­la­tion."

The re­vised deficit is pred­i­cat­ed on con­ser­v­a­tive prices of US$25 per bar­rel for oil for the rest of the year and US$1.80 per MMB­TU for nat­ur­al gas.

"This re­sults in a pro­ject­ed loss of rev­enue in FY 2020 of $9.2 bil­lion, to which must be added an­oth­er net $1 bil­lion in ex­tra­or­di­nary ex­pen­di­ture," it said.

Gov­ern­ment has al­so in­di­cat­ed that it will seek to utilise mon­ey from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, not ex­ceed­ing TT$10 bil­lion in any giv­en year, for bud­getary sup­port in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, such as the cur­rent pan­dem­ic.

"Var­i­ous in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing sources have been iden­ti­fied for mo­bil­is­ing ad­di­tion­al re­sources for the next three months with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther fund­ing in six months to one year if need­ed," the re­port stat­ed.

The Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee has al­so ex­am­ined the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try and ways to im­prove the lo­cal prod­uct.

Un­der the ban­ner "Ex­pand­ing Agri­cul­tur­al Ac­tiv­i­ty", the com­mit­tee de­tailed plans to ex­plore new and in­no­v­a­tive farm­ing tech­niques such as aqua­cul­ture, in or­der to achieve in­creased food pro­duc­tion.

Its plans in­clude in­creas­ing and im­prov­ing agro-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties to add val­ue to pri­ma­ry agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts.

The plan is al­so to de­vel­op a "labour swaps and skills align­ment pro­gramme" in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) aimed di­rect­ly at the CEPEP and grad­u­ates from the rel­a­tive ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions to move to the agri­cul­tur­al and agro-pro­cess­ing sec­tors.

The plan al­so in­cludes a re­duc­tion of the min­i­mum acreage to qual­i­fy for the re­cent in­cen­tives by the De­part­ment of Food Pro­duc­tion and to al­low farm­ers with land ti­tle is­sues to utilise af­fi­davits and Cer­tifi­cates of Com­fort to ac­cess ser­vices and sup­port.

There is al­so a plan to in­ten­si­fy the “Eat Lo­cal Cam­paign” and re­view To­ba­go’s School Feed­ing Pro­gramme to­wards in­cor­po­rat­ing more lo­cal­ly pro­duced prod­ucts in its meal plans.

The Gov­ern­ment is al­so seek­ing to dis­cour­age the im­por­ta­tion of lux­u­ry goods through in­creased tax­a­tion.

"With an ap­pro­pri­ate sun­set clause, to dis­cour­age the im­por­ta­tion of lux­u­ry goods across all cat­e­gories and save on for­eign ex­change re­serves. The Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends that the Min­istry of Fi­nance de­vel­op a list of the lux­u­ry goods to be tar­get­ed."

The com­mit­tee al­so rec­om­mend­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of an Ex­e­cu­tion Task Force which will be re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing a de­tailed im­ple­men­ta­tion plan, im­ple­ment­ing a mon­i­tor­ing plan, pro­vid­ing over­sight and ac­count­ing for de­liv­er­ables and to li­aise di­rect­ly with the Prime Min­is­ter to as­sess progress.