Editorial
Newsday
FOR TASHIA BURRIS, the budget left a lot to be desired.
“I was a bit disappointed,” said THA’s Secretary of Tourism, Culture, Antiquities and Transport last week. “We’re still not giving tourism the attention we should.”
Ms Burris had hoped for “something radical, something bold, something progressive” from Finance Minister Colm Imbert, especially as Tobago’s tourism industry is now emerging from the shadow of the Covid19 pandemic. Other countries in the Caribbean, she noted, have taken a number of drastic measures to rebuild their markets.
Tobago received an allocation of $2.5 billion, $185 million more than it received last year. However, $2.2 billion of this allocation will serve recurring expenses, $18 million is for URP and $9.2 million is for CEPEP. THA’s development program for the year amounts to 300 million dollars.
Mr. Imbert noted that Tobago has access to loan financing and indirect distributions through state agencies and ministries of about $731.5 million. Hundreds of millions, he said, will also be spent on transport links and national security.
But such funding has long been a consistent feature of the relationship between central government and THA. What is particularly frustrating is that it has not resulted in any meaningful change.
The lack of bold action has begun to add fuel to another Tobago issue.
“Autonomy is about more than making Tobagonians feel like men and women,” THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine said last week in the wake of the budget. “It’s also about giving legislative authority for some simple things that we don’t have right now.”
But autonomy may already be the touchstone of relations between Trinidad and Tobago’s tourism policies. To date, there is a futile division between special purpose state agencies mandated to promote the sector.
As a result, Trinidad and Tobago have dual memberships in the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, which convened a tourism showcase in London days before Mr Trump’s budget speech. Imbert. (Tobago, rather than Trinidad, was the special “lead partner” of this year’s works at the Leonardo Royal London Hotel.)
Mr. Augustine had met with Mr. Imbert (whose ministry is also the sole corporation for CAL) before the budget speech. One of the main measures affecting Tobago in that speech was a planned increase in air and sea bridge fees, something Ms Burris argues is poorly timed, while Mr. Augustine notes that it is not associated with any clear increase in efficiency.
Tobago’s historic carnival scheduled for later this month will be a major test of THA’s own vision for the island and its ability to make do with the resources at its disposal.
