The Gov­ern­ment's Fi­nance & Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee met yes­ter­day to pre­pare their fi­nal re­port on the fi­nan­cial as­pects of host­ing the en­tire Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) tour­na­ment and the cab­i­net will now fi­nal­ly sit on it to give fi­nal ap­proval.

Due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, the own­ers of the CPL has de­cid­ed to of­fer the en­tire tour­na­ment to T&T and give the pro­posed start date of Au­gust 18, fi­nal ap­proval needs to come in this week. Last week, CPL need­ed to send in some fi­nal in­for­ma­tion to the gov­ern­ment and this they did ac­cord­ing to Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer (COO) Pe­te Rus­sell. "We have pro­vid­ed all the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed but I as­sume this still needs to fil­ter down to the cab­i­net."

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley speak­ing on I95 Sports show on Sun­day said that he is op­ti­mistic that the tour­na­ment will come off. "We had a lit­tle stick­ing point. It is be­ing worked out and hope­ful­ly, we can sign off on it at our cab­i­net meet­ing on Thurs­day. The ma­jor point was the pro­to­col for host­ing the tour­na­ment and this has been achieved."

Asked if the stick­ing point was of a fi­nan­cial na­ture, Row­ley said: "I must main­tain the po­si­tion of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty with CPL." He added: "Once the gov­ern­ment is sat­is­fied that the pub­lic in­ter­est is well pro­tect­ed then we will go. I am fair­ly op­ti­mistic we will get some­thing go­ing once we are able to clear, which we have done with the health sit­u­a­tion."

With the CPL due to get go­ing on Au­gust 18 and gen­er­al elec­tions in T&T set for Au­gust 10, Dr Row­ley said he sees no is­sue. "They are two sep­a­rate things. One is na­tion­al and the oth­er is in­ter­na­tion­al. Once the elec­tion is over we move on. We have the learn to walk and chew gum at the same time."

The cab­i­net is ex­pect­ed to have in hand all re­ports that will al­low them to make an in­formed de­ci­sion this week. The Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee is re­spon­si­ble for es­tab­lish­ing poli­cies, pro­ce­dures, and con­trols to fa­cil­i­tate fi­nan­cial gov­er­nance, which in­cludes fi­nan­cial plan­ning, bud­get ap­provals, ex­pen­di­ture ap­provals, and fi­nan­cial re­port­ing.

Once con­firmed the tour­na­ment will be held at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do and the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain. The eighth edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion is sched­ule to be bowled off on Au­gust 18 and will con­clud­ed on Septe­mer 10.