The Tobago House of Assembly (THA) has limited funds left to fund its expenses until the end of the financial quarter.
This was the assessment of the finances of the THA by its Chief Secretary and Secretary of Finance, Trade and the Economy Farley Augustine on Wednesday.
Augustine was speaking to the media at his first virtual post-Executive Council briefing.
He said the assembly received it disbursement from central government for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 (October - December) in the sum of $558,750,000, but the last subvention was received only a few days ago.
“We are almost through it all – in terms of spending it all.”
He said he would be impressing upon Minister of Finance Colm Imbert that he and the ministry need to “follow the law” regarding the issuance of money to the THA.
“When you look at the law, the law requires that these funds be disbursed quarterly. At the moment, the funds are disbursed irregularly and they are disbursed, most often, on a monthly basis. That’s a difficult way to do business.”
He said the result of that is that the THA has had, over time, to use an overdraft facility with the bank in order to meet any shortfall while awaiting disbursements.
“It also means that we cannot plan sufficiently if it is we cannot regulate how and when we receive those disbursements.
“That overdraft facility is costing us quite a tidy sum and, of course, that adds to our recurrent expenditure. On top of which, the overdraft facility is not catered for in the budgetary allocation from the Minister of Finance, so we have been trying the use this facility prudently. However, the reality is that we cannot, we cannot, we cannot do good business with getting our funds in an irregular manner.”
Augustine said Tobago was expected to receive $300 million in bond financing from the Finance Ministry, however only $163 million was received in May.
“Guess what, in less than six months every single cent of the $163 million was spent – all of it.
“I have since requested a list of all the projects that this money was spent on and all the people who benefitted from this $163 million. But all was spent, and we don’t have forthcoming, just yet, a priority list upon which this $163 million was spent.”
He said in order to get the rest of the bond financing, the assembly will have to go back and appeal to the Minister of Finance “and appeal to him to allow us to borrow the rest of the bond financing.
“Additionally, we have to negotiate some more with the bank to get the additional sums. We also have to look at debt management because it’s not free money. It’s money that we have to pay for and pay at an interest and so, naturally, our recurrent expenditure is increasing.
“We have used out all of the $163 million. It is difficult to pinpoint the kind of priorities this $163 million was spent on, but in less than six months we used up all of the $163 million bond financing simply because we were in an election year.”
He said former chief secretary Ancil Dennis, in July, promised that that he
