Creese queries separate tourism body for Tobago

Independent Senator Stephen Creese wants to know why little Tobago needs a separate tourism body despite also having the Tobago House of Assembly (THA).

Creese also said Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat should have the biggest budget allocation and young people must be taught how to grow crops to feed themselves, including hydroponic farming.

“Otherwise Sandals will have no effect because they’ll be bringing in their own food. If we aren’t producing food here the foreign exchange problem will continue (with) all that we earn from oil and gas,” he said.

Speaking in the budget debate in the Senate on Tuesday, Creese threw cold water on the idea that oil and natural gas could again become TT’s economic salvation, saying these fossil fuels were being replaced globally as they were costly to extract from the ground.

“Oil and gas are on the way out. That’s the global analysis,” he said.

Recalling his visit to Texas a decade ago, he related the switch-over as occurring even back then. “Instead of seeing oil-jacks, windmills dotted the landscape, Texas, the heart of oil land,” he said.

Suggesting waste could be used to generate electricity, Creese said Local Government should be at the centre of such initiatives, even as he lamented that nothing in the Budget referred to these possibilities. Creese related that a cross-party team had visited Nova Scotia to observe waste-to-electricity facilities but that nothing had happened in TT since. “When I left, $700 million to $800 million was the cost of scavenging annually (in TT) but there is no return economically. The ministry of the future is the Ministry of Local Government. You are sitting on a goldmine.”

He said waste must be regarded as a resource for utilisation.

Creese urged that local schools participate in such waste-to-energy/recycling projects. “Our education system is not geared to solving the problems facing us, which is how to get rid of all this waste.”

Also focussing on Tobago, Independent Senator Dr Dhanayshar Mahabir questioned how the (THA) could be receiving transfers from central government but receive a rating from a ratings agency, so it could borrow money.

In his contribution to the budget debate in the Senate, Mahabir also said he was not confident that Government would be able to balance the budget by next year. He said TT has been running deficit budgets since 2009 under the then Patrick Manning administration. On whether this pattern would end next year, Mahabir said, "Hardly likely." He said in addition to the gap between revenue and expenditure at the level of government, debt servicing was needed for certain State Enterprises in TT. He cited Petrotrin, TTEC, WASA and Caribbean Airlines as examples.

Mahabir said the country's economic circumstances require out of the box solutions. He called for the creation of a fireworks tax. Mahabir said the money from that tax could be used to fund the Chronic Disease Assistance Programme (CDAP).

While he understood Government's need to tax the gambling industry, Mahabir said many poor people gamble. He suggested accounts be opened at the Unit Trust Corporation (UTC), an dthat interest from those accounts be placed into one fund and a random draw be done to give clients the chance to win that money. Mahabir said he also understood the proposed tax on commercial banks and suggested credit unions be the poor people's banks.

On the recent flooding in TT, he declared, "Flooding should be a thing of the past." He called for the return of the Beverage Container Bill and for the banning of styrofoam in TT.

Energy Minister Franklin Khan, in his contribution, said Trinidad and Tobago’s subsidy on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) was approximately $243 million and Petrotrin absorbed $107 million of this amount. Khan reminded senators that this subsidy was not touched in the budget.