Cudjoe: CYG within $35m budget, TTOC never requested more funds

The Commonwealth Youth Games (CYG) did not cost TT $44 million to host and the TT Olympic Committee (TTOC) has not requested more money from the Ministry of Sport and Youth Development to help offset its CYG bills.

This was confirmed by sport minister Shamfa Cudjoe on Wednesday, who said the CYG did not incur any cost overruns from the government’s $35 million allocation as host nation.

“For fiscal year 2022 to 2023 (ended September 30), we committed only $30 million of that money knowing fully well that they’d (TTOC) be unable to process all their invoices in that fiscal year, so we had budgeted $30 million for the first year, and $5 million to the second year (2023-2024).

“But as we got to end of the fiscal year, we recognised that they did not submit sufficient invoices to fully utilise the $30 million that was allocated for the 2022/2023 fiscal year. The receipts they submitted at the time to close off our accounting, was only $17.5m.

“We then estimated, based on the rate that they were submitting, that they would only submit an additional $3m. Therefore we estimated a total spend of only $20m in that year (by September 30; that is why the allocation is $15 million, which represents the balance of the $35 million that was requested of the Government, and passed by the Cabinet, Cudjoe said.

Cudjoe added that in the last week of September, the Ministry of Finance kept their accounting systems open until the 30th; therefore processing additional invoices that were submitted by the TTOC after working hand in hand with the ministry’s deputy permanent secretary. This brought the spending up to $27 million of the $30 million allocation for fiscal 2022/2023. This means that TTOC’s expenditure, so far, remains within their $35m allocation for the CYG, with approximately $8 million in bills, still to come in.

“We only have $27 million in invoices from TTOC and we only have approval from Cabinet for $35 million. TTOC has not requested more money.

“I don’t want it to look like me as a minister, or my ministry, is entertaining a cost overrun that was not approved by the Cabinet. I would not do that. I will go back to the Cabinet and do the necessary to show how the funds were spent and justify if and why additional support is needed,” Cudjoe said.