IDA leader: Budget brings no change for Tobago

POLITICAL leader of the Innovative Democratic Alliance (IDA) Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-Angus is questioning whether Tobago has received enough funding in its 2024/2025 budgetary allocation.

The Tobago House of Assembly (THA) has been allotted a total of $2.599 billion for its 2025 budgetary allocation.

During his September 30 budget presentation, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said the total allocation for the assembly represented an increase of $22.756 million.

Days earlier, THA chief secretary Farley Augustine asked for 5.8 per cent of the national budget, but Imbert said Tobago’s allocation represented 4.35 per cent of the national budget.

At a press conference at its headquarters in Scarborough on October 9, Tsoiafatt-Angus said the IDA has been talking to people in communities about the allocation and what it means to them.

“While you hear about the trinkets been given in the budget, the reality is that when they go to the grocery, the money buys even less than the year before, and that’s the reality that we face.

“Perhaps we have to ask why is that, because a budget is supposed to bring relief to the people in the country. The budget is supposed to offer a better quality of life as the years go by.

“Instead, in this country, every year the government rolls out a new budget full of fancy words and promises, but no real change to the people that really matters.”

The party’s PRO Kay Trotman said Tobago is at a juncture in its development where the question of fairness needs to be asked, or whether once again Tobago is being shortchanged as the island looks to forge ahead and develop.

She said as the allocation is broken down and its implications assessed, the discourse is not just for policymakers but more for the everyday Tobagonian.

“The budget affects us deep within our pockets. It is not just mere numbers or figures. This budget is about our lives, our families and the opportunities that may lie before us.”

Trotman said for years, the government, regardless of which dispensation and administration is in power, has given to Tobago allocations that have always been to the lower end of the range of allocation suggested by the Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC).

“This fact means that the central government, whatever the administration’s dispensation, does not see Tobago as playing any significant role – or any role at all – in national development.”

She said this is not just the stance of the central government.

“This THA administration is also culpable in a central government administration taking this stance, for this administration has been peddling this narrative that Tobago is doing well.”

She said during the reign of this THA administration, the Tobago economy has been on a downward and declining trajectory.

“Such a decline has hit Tobagonians deep in their pockets. I would want to say that the central government does not appreciate Tobago’s dire situation, and for a minister of finance to just assume, because it was reported to him without substantial evidence to justify that Tobago is doing well, they can give us some cause for pause.”

She said the central government themselves has no clue what Tobago needs for its development and that is why it has been hellbent on undercutting any effort by the assembly to propel development on the island.

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