Ramona: No funds for Jack’s $4.5B budget request

The Tobago House of Assembly (THA) administration is chasing pie-in-the-sky with its $4.5 billion budget request, which simply won’t be granted by Finance Minister Colm Imbert, said Couva North MP Ramona Ramdial Opposition spokesman on Tobago. She said, "We are totally disappointed. It is unreasonable."

On Monday THA finance secretary Joel Jack read a budget of $211 million in revenues and $4.5 billion in expenditure, the latter to be sought from the Government.

Ramdial said Imbert had withheld funds from ministries in Trinidad, so she didn't expect him to give Jack $4.5 billion. "The reality is that the funding is not there. Here we have the Minister of Finance himself seeking $4 billion, while Jack is asking for $4.5 billion that Imbert just doesn't have.

"I'd say that at least half, or even 80 per cent of the THA projects that Jack spoke about will not be realised this year."

She said the THA budget was not well thought-out and it lacked any plan to make the island self-sufficient.

Ramdial said the Government had offered conflicting accounts as to whether tourism or agriculture would be the main driver of economic diversification in Tobago. Further, she was concerned that much of the proposed new agricultural thrust seemed geared towards supplying food-stuffs to the proposed Sandals Hotel but not to feeding the local population. Ramdial also warned against an over-reliance of revenues from Sandals, saying it would take at least two years to built, more time to operationalise and an even longer time to enjoy its tax-breaks before ultimately contributing to the Treasury. She queried an apparent $68 million price-tag for a new Scarborough RC Primary School.

Ramdial hit the Government for messing up the inter-island sea-bridge and then not helping Tobago businesses which had suffered as a result, such as by a loss of domestic tourists.

She said businesses had implored the Government for a bailout and for help approaching private banks to request flexible re-payment plans for their loans.

“It’s a really sad situation,” Ramdial lamented. “Just recently banks served foreclosure notices on 12 businesses in Tobago, in addition to those from before.”

Ramdial said she could not put her finger on anything that had been fought for Tobagonians by the two Tobago MPs, Sport Minister Shamfa Cudjoe and Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister Ayanna Webster-Roy. Ramdial thought the decline in Tobago's economy would hurt any sort of lobbying for self-government. "I don't understand why Tobago people are so quiet in the face of all this suffering." She speculated that residents are pinning their hopes on the fact of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley being a Tobagonian will help them.