Financial analyst: THA Budget, a big farce

FINANCIAL analyst David Walker has described the 2019 Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Budget as a big farce. “The entire budget is a farce and everybody knows it,” he told Newsday in an interview.

The $4.72 billion package was presented by Finance Secretary Joel Jack, last week Monday, in the Assembly Legislature, Scarborough.

Walker said requesting a figure "almost double what we all know will be our income achieves no sensible purpose.

"Instead, it gives Central government a blank slate with which to define Tobago’s budget for the year."

He added: "The THA's projection cannot and will not be used, leaving the door wide open for the real Tobago budget to be crafted in Trinidad. Tobago will then, as has become routine, thank Trinidad for its allocation.

"They will pat themselves on the back for agreeing a set of expenditures that bear no relation to what was requested. But they will express deep satisfaction and praise their friends in Central government for giving them 50% or less of what they ask for."

Saying budgets are an estimate of income and expenditure for a period of 12 months, Walker said the purpose of the exercise is principally to provide a model of how an entity might perform "if certain strategies, events, plans are carried out.

“In the case of the THA, one assumes that its goal is to provide an estimate of the cost of delivering on political promises." He said the budget was built upon a deeply flawed premise.

"Any member of the public could make a very good guess as to what Tobago’s income would actually be. This is because it is set in law at a percentage of the national budget.

"That percentage must sit within a specified range but for the past five years has been just above four per cent and it highly unlikely to exceed 4.3 per cent.

"We also know the national budget is probably not going to exceed $55 billion. One could therefore reliably predict that the income allocated to Tobago from Central government will be in the order of $2 to $2.5 billion dollars."