Camille McEach­nie

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Joel Jack said de­spite the ef­fects of COVID-19 and a re­duced al­lo­ca­tion from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment of $148.63 mil­lion for fis­cal 2021, To­ba­go’s econ­o­my is on a path for growth.

He was speak­ing at the THA’s 41st Ple­nary Sit­ting for the 2017-2021 term yes­ter­day.

Jack said To­ba­go was al­lo­cat­ed $2.6 bil­lion, 4.3 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get and 54.4 per cent, less than in fis­cal 2020.

He said the THA has pro­ject­ed a de­cline in the econ­o­my by 14.3 per cent.

“Mr Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the as­so­ci­at­ed eco­nom­ic down­turn for 2020, we project a 14.3 per cent de­cline in the To­ba­go econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, he said that af­ter the As­sem­bly pri­or­i­tized its projects, this pro­jec­tion has changed.

“It’s es­ti­mat­ed that we have a spend­ing pro­file of re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture of $1.7 bil­lion, de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme ex­pen­di­ture of ex­ceed­ing $700 mil­lion and a fur­ther $750 mil­lion be­ing spent by oth­er Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment min­istries. Giv­en this lev­el of spend­ing, we have con­ser­v­a­tive­ly pro­ject­ed a 3.3 per cent growth in eco­nom­ic out­put for the To­ba­go econ­o­my in 2021 and sus­tained growth in 2022.”

He said projects such as the ANR Robin­son air­port ex­pan­sion project and de­silt­ing of the Hills­bor­ough Dam re­main on the agen­da.

He shared the rea­son­ing be­hind the repri­or­i­tized spend­ing.

“These in­clude stim­u­lat­ing the To­ba­go econ­o­my, en­hanc­ing our gov­er­nance frame­work, re­vi­tal­iz­ing the tourism sec­tor, re­vi­tal­iz­ing agri­cul­ture and im­prov­ing food se­cu­ri­ty, strength­en­ing small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, build­ing strate­gic dig­i­tal, en­rich­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties and en­hanc­ing cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment.”

Mean­while, Mi­nor­i­ty coun­cil­lor Faith B. Yis­rael ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil’s de­ci­sion not to present a new bud­get.

She high­light­ed sev­er­al key projects that should be among the THA’s pri­or­i­ty projects in my Good­wood/Belle Gar­den West area.

She iden­ti­fied the youth de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, de­vel­op­ment of Rich­mond Beach, and hous­ing in Glam­or­gan as key projects.

She sug­gest­ed the Pem­broke Her­itage Park be a full-time theme park sim­i­lar to Dis­ney­land in the USA.

She al­so sug­gest­ed the us­age of the Agri­cul­ture Fa­cil­i­ties in Golds­bor­ough as Cen­tres of Ex­cel­lence for aquapon­ics and green hous­ing.

Dr Yis­rael begged the THA to al­so build a pavil­ion on the Good­wood play­field.

She round­ed up her con­tri­bu­tion by ask­ing the THA to de­vel­op a com­pre­hen­sive waste man­age­ment plan for To­ba­go.

In 2013, the THA be­gan sit­ting in No­vem­ber to out­line how it in­tends to spend its al­lo­ca­tion from Trinidad. It sends its bud­get to Trinidad in June, an­nu­al­ly. For fis­cal 2021 it re­quest­ed $4.71 bil­lion to run the is­land’s af­fairs.