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  • 5 months ago
Finance Secretary Petal-Ann Roberts says following a recent meeting with the Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo the state of the economy was realised and the THA had to lower its budgetary request.

This month the THA budget would be read by Finance Secretary Petal-Ann Roberts who has been meeting with stakeholders to this end. More from Elizabeth Williams.
Transcript
00:00The minister in his, you know, preliminary conversation started with a caveat of the government's position.
00:08It is not very good. I don't want to get into too much detail.
00:11I think the minister's responsibility to bring that to the country,
00:15but basically gave a general overview of where we are at as a government.
00:19And it is in that context where I had to pull back the requests.
00:23Because really and truly what we were requesting is the difference between 4.35%
00:30and the minimum that we are asking for now going forward of 5.1%.
00:35And that would bring us to about $448 million.
00:39Mrs. Petalan Roberts spoke on Monday on a Tobago morning show.
00:44She said there are funding gaps to be filled by the Tobago House of Assembly.
00:48We did make a request and they did say they will try their best to accede to that request
00:54to see how best we can, you know, just close that funding gap for this fiscal year.
01:00So far, we have shifted, transferred monies from recurrent to DP in the amount of $120 million.
01:08As I said, the recurrent expenses, sorry, the development program is grossly underfunded.
01:14So every year we make those shifts.
01:15So we have 44 priority projects, 38 development projects,
01:19and we have so far shifted $120 million from recurrent to development program.
01:26Discussions with the finance minister also featured around property tax,
01:30the ability to borrow, an IDB loan of U.S. $64 million taken by the previous administration,
01:38and there was also a meeting with planning minister Kennedy Surat Singh.
01:42She feels confident under this government, Tobago would get what Tobago wants.
01:48I feel more confident than ever before.
01:52I've not only met in these conversations as Secretary of Finance, but as a technocrat,
01:57I've been in the room with Ovi London when he was chief secretary, the former Secretary of Finance, Joel Jack.
02:03And this meeting, to me, the mutual respect and the attitude to seek Tobago's interest,
02:14I felt that more than ever before.
02:17I am hopeful that it would materialize into something positive for Tobago.
02:21The minister said he did get instructions from the prime minister to ensure that Tobago's need element
02:29and hear us out, hear what our needs are.
02:33And one of the critical matters I brought to his attention is the overdraft facility that we have to include
02:37because we get these releases so late.
02:40Last June, the THA presented a $3.956 billion budget.
02:46Last September, the THA received a $2.599 billion.
02:51Elizabeth Williams, TV6 News.
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