Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go stake­hold­ers are di­vid­ed on how the $32 mil­lion mid-year sup­ple­men­tary al­lo­ca­tion to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) should be spent—but they all agree on one thing: it’s not near­ly enough.

Each sec­tor is now lob­by­ing for sup­port, rang­ing from debt set­tle­ment to tourism re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion.

Chair­man of the To­ba­go arm of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Cur­tis Williams said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty wel­comes the al­lo­ca­tion, but in­sists it must be used wise­ly.

“We hope that goes di­rect­ly to­wards ur­gent de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­ture pri­or­i­ties,” Williams told Guardian Me­dia.

“We know for sure that there were cash flow chal­lenges in meet­ing oblig­a­tions to ser­vice providers and sup­pli­ers—es­pe­cial­ly those im­pact­ed by the oil spill.”

He said con­trac­tors owed mil­lions are still wait­ing to be paid, and while the $32 mil­lion isn’t enough to set­tle all debts, it should be used to ad­dress some of the more man­age­able ones.

Williams said the cham­ber will con­tin­ue ad­vo­cat­ing for a larg­er al­lo­ca­tion in the na­tion­al bud­get. He al­so called for greater sup­port for small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es still strug­gling in the af­ter­math of COVID-19.

But THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris de­scribed the al­lo­ca­tion as a na­tion­al in­sult.

He point­ed out that the $32 mil­lion rep­re­sents just one per cent of the $3.143 bil­lion in mid-year spend­ing by Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

“To­ba­go on­ly re­ceived one cent out of every dol­lar be­ing spent na­tion­al­ly,” Mor­ris said in a press con­fer­ence. “And we are told this is the best re­la­tion­ship To­ba­go has ever had with Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. If this is love, I wouldn’t want to see their hate.”

He ac­cused the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) and its lead­ers of stay­ing silent, even though the is­land is re­ceiv­ing less un­der this Gov­ern­ment than it did un­der the PNM. Mor­ris not­ed that To­ba­go re­ceived $100 mil­lion in the 2022 mid-year re­view and $50 mil­lion in 2024.

He al­so ques­tioned whether the $32 mil­lion would go to­ward de­vel­op­ment or sim­ply to cov­er ar­rears for THA of­fi­cials.

Mean­while, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald MacLean is hop­ing a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the funds is al­lo­cat­ed to tourism.

He said that while $32 mil­lion was a small sum, any in­vest­ment in­to tourism right now could help seal ma­jor deals that bring more vis­i­tors to the is­land.

“We need that fund­ing to help us se­cure projects and part­ner­ships that can bear fruit quick­ly,” MacLean said. “Tourism has the po­ten­tial to stim­u­late sev­er­al oth­er sec­tors. But it won’t hap­pen if the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to be un­der­fund­ed.”

The THA is ex­pect­ed to present its own bud­get re­quest on Mon­day.