Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

To­ba­go will re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al $32 mil­lion in sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing for 2025. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment is al­so fi­nal­is­ing a $102 mil­lion loan from the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF) for To­ba­go.

An ad­di­tion­al $621 mil­lion will al­so come from an al­lo­ca­tion aris­ing out of man­date for all min­istries and state agen­cies spend­ing mon­ey on To­ba­go projects to li­aise di­rect­ly with To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, the two To­ba­go MPs and the THA to fi­nalise ex­pen­di­tures for 2025.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo an­nounced this in yes­ter­day’s Mid-year Bud­get Re­view while seek­ing to “ad­dress mis­in­for­ma­tion” he said the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) are shar­ing.

“I have to say the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), be­cause right now the PNM is split in­to many ad­ver­sar­i­al fac­tions, with many lead­ers,” Tan­coo added.

On To­ba­go, Tan­coo said, “We’re not vin­dic­tive to the peo­ple of To­ba­go like those op­po­site. This Gov­ern­ment, led by the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, is a Gov­ern­ment for all T&T. All, All, All! Un­like the PNM, we’ve open­ly ex­pressed a de­sire to work with our broth­ers and sis­ters in To­ba­go and to en­sure To­ba­go gets a fair share of the na­tion­al pie. Side by side T&T!”

Tan­coo said for fis­cal 2025, the then-Fi­nance min­is­ter promised the THA $2.6 bil­lion.

“This al­lo­ca­tion left the THA with very lit­tle for de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes on the is­land. I’m proud to an­nounce that the THA will re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al $134 mil­lion un­der this Gov­ern­ment, $32 mil­lion of this will be al­lo­cat­ed via the Sup­ple­men­tary Ex­pen­di­ture.”

“In ad­di­tion, (on Tues­day) I met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of CAF, the Caribbean Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca, and I’m proud to an­nounce that this Gov­ern­ment is fi­nal­is­ing arrange­ments for the sign­ing of a US$15 mil­lion or TT$102 mil­lion loan from CAF to un­der­take sev­er­al coastal pro­tec­tion projects across To­ba­go.”

Tan­coo said these projects were iden­ti­fied as crit­i­cal for To­bag­o­ni­ans’ ben­e­fit.

“What’s shame­ful is that the loan was ne­go­ti­at­ed, more than a year, and the PNM Fi­nance min­is­ter re­fused to sign the agree­ment for more than a year! Pure vin­dic­tive­ness and wicked­ness to­wards To­bag­o­ni­ans!”

Tan­coo said the Prime Min­is­ter in­struct­ed him to re­move every stum­bling block and work with CAF and the THA to start this work ur­gent­ly.

“For Bud­get 2026/7 and go­ing for­ward, this Gov­ern­ment in­tends li­ais­ing with the To­ba­go Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and the THA in To­ba­go to en­sure that the elect­ed of­fi­cials of To­ba­go, the MPs and the THA, in deal­ing with To­ba­go af­fairs, have a di­rect say in ex­pen­di­ture be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment ... Gone are the days when a prime min­is­ter in Port-of-Spain will call his con­trac­tor friends and busi­ness part­ners in To­ba­go to dic­tate projects to fill their pock­ets. The elect­ed MPs in Scar­bor­ough and our broth­ers and sis­ters in To­ba­go will chart their fu­ture de­vel­op­ment ...” Tan­coo added.

Tan­coo at­tacks PNM

Tan­coo, de­vot­ing half of his ad­dress to at­tack­ing the past gov­ern­ment, said, “They knew ex­act­ly what they were do­ing. They de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der­fund­ed crit­i­cal ex­pen­di­tures, plan­ning all along to re­turn af­ter the elec­tion and de­mand more mon­ey—a shame­less ploy to ma­nip­u­late pub­lic fi­nances for po­lit­i­cal gain. But the game is over. The peo­ple have spo­ken. Now, this Gov­ern­ment must clean up the mess left be­hind by their reck­less mis­man­age­ment. This isn’t just fis­cal ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty—it’s eco­nom­ic sab­o­tage!”

Tan­coo said at Mon­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee de­bate the for­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter “... shame­less­ly con­fessed that the econ­o­my was in a bad way. For 10 bud­gets, this is the same man who bud­get af­ter bud­get boast­ed that the coun­try had sta­bilised, was do­ing well, that he had trans­formed the econ­o­my even while he had full di­rect full and in­ti­mate knowl­edge, he was de­stroy­ing T&T’s struc­tur­al, so­cial, fis­cal and fi­nan­cial fab­ric.

“Every sin­gle so­cial, eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial in­di­ca­tor has fall­en over the last decade. They col­lapsed growth, drove away in­vest­ment, crip­pled our en­er­gy sec­tor, and piled un­sus­tain­able debt on­to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, all while fail­ing to de­liv­er re­al progress,” Tan­coo said.

“When you look at the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port, over $30 bil­lion dol­lars in ex­pen­di­ture was un­ver­i­fied, couldn’t be lo­cat­ed, were not pre­sent­ed for au­dit or not placed in the vote books in 2024....”

He hoped the for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter would tell the coun­try “the truth about this un­holy scan­dal. Be­cause I may have to tell it and when the 2025 re­port is re­leased, we ex­pect to see even more of a feed­ing fren­zy of cor­rup­tion.”

Ed­i­tor's note: In a pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this sto­ry, we in­cor­rect­ly re­port­ed that the THA was re­ceiv­ing an ad­di­tion­al $134 mil­lion and a $102 mil­lion loan from CAF. We apol­o­gise for the er­ror.