Jack seeks quarterly disbursement of THA funds

Finance Secretary Joel Jack wants Finance Minister Colm Imbert give the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) its budgetary allocations in quarterly tranches as mandated by the THA Act.

Speaking at Wednesday’s post Executive Council media briefing at the Victor E Bruce Financial Complex in Scarborough, Jack confirmed that the monthly remit of the THA allocation which he said was because of challenges in raising revenue in previous years by the minister. He said, however, that now that the minister’s revenue-earning system was now more predictable, the Assembly was asking for its money en bloc.

He said the issue was raised at a meeting with Imbert in September.

“We anticipate that given the fact that the Minister has greater predictability in terms of his revenue stream, given the over subscription as it relates to NIF funding, that we should see a return in fiscal 2019 to the funding in accordance with the THA Act 40 of 1996.

“That was top of the agenda in our recent meeting with the Minister, prior to the budget presentation and we intimated to him that we understood the challenges but what we want is funding to the THA to be accordance with the Act to ensure that we have greater predictability and to facilitate greater planning in the affairs of Tobago,” Jack said.

“Given the current challenges, in terms of raising revenues by the Minister in previous years, we had the intermittent challenge of receiving our funding monthly. In this quarter, we have received our allocation for July and August.

“In respect of the month of September, because of the revenues that are collected at Inland Revenue, that revenue is netted off against our allocation. So, we had to wait until probably a couple weeks before the end of the financial year … because we collect revenues on behalf of the ministry. The cut-off date was on Thursday (last) and we had to provide the ministry with an estimate of the revenues that we intend to collect for September…given the revenue receipts then that final allocation was received,” he said.

Jack said the Assembly has not been impacted in any way with the monthly disbursements.

“We have an overdraft facility and we have buffers that we would use to take care of the timing of when we receive the funding from the Ministry of Finance…once we receive the funding, we just net it off. So, we continue to manage the funding of the Assembly,” he said.