To­bag­o­ni­ans would re­mem­ber the mantra be­tween 2001 and 2010, “What To­ba­go wants, To­ba­go gets,” made pop­u­lar by late Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning when a fel­low PNM leader, Orville Lon­don, was at the helm of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

The fact that those days have passed can ei­ther be at­trib­uted to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion—with se­vere­ly sup­pressed oil and gas rev­enues com­pared to that era—or to the change in po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship—with a PNM Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and a TPP-gov­erned THA.

There’s no ques­tion that Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had hung his hat too high when he de­liv­ered the THA Bud­get in June this year, ask­ing for $4.54 bil­lion for 2025.

Few, in­clud­ing Au­gus­tine, ex­pect­ed that amount to be giv­en, even though he end­ed his pre­sen­ta­tion on a hope­ful note, ask­ing for some love from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

But Au­gus­tine’s pro­jec­tions were wrong to be­gin with, as he opined in his pre­sen­ta­tion that na­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture would amount to at least $65.78 bil­lion, equiv­a­lent to the Gov­ern­ment’s 2024 es­ti­mates of ex­pen­di­ture.

That led to an un­re­al­is­tic pitch for To­ba­go to be giv­en 6.9 per cent of the pie, the high end of what the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion ruled in 2000 that To­ba­go should be giv­en as a per­cent­age of an­nu­al na­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture.

With the 2025 Bud­get be­ing $59.74 bil­lion—way be­low Au­gus­tine’s pro­jec­tion—the THA has been giv­en $2.59 bil­lion to spend in fis­cal 2025, rep­re­sent­ing 4.5 per cent of na­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture. 

So even if Au­gus­tine had got­ten his wish for 6.3 per cent of this bud­get, To­ba­go would have on­ly re­ceived $3.76 bil­lion, well be­low what he was ask­ing for.

The de­bate on whether To­ba­go de­serves the up­per lim­it has been on­go­ing for years. 

A clear an­swer came from a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment which re­viewed the To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment Bill in 2021 and de­ter­mined that To­ba­go should get 6.8 per cent of the na­tion­al pie.

Al­though the bill has not yet been passed in Par­lia­ment, PNM mem­bers were on the JSC that agreed to the 6.8 per cent fig­ure and the Gov­ern­ment has nev­er since re­vised it down­ward.

Yet, with the na­tion­al bud­get hav­ing in­creased by $2 bil­lion in the last two years—from $57.68 bil­lion in 2023 to $59.74 bil­lion to­day—the mon­ey giv­en to To­ba­go for de­vel­op­men­tal plans has been halved from $400 mil­lion to $205 mil­lion.

The 2024 al­lo­ca­tion was $260 mil­lion, with a sim­i­lar Na­tion­al Bud­get of over $59 bil­lion.

This is a big and sig­nif­i­cant drop con­sid­er­ing that the de­vel­op­men­tal al­lo­ca­tion is cru­cial for the THA to raise the stan­dard of life on the is­land and ex­pand its econ­o­my.

Fur­ther­more, the THA’s al­lo­ca­tion for eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture has fall­en from $231 mil­lion to $74 mil­lion over the same two-year pe­ri­od.

It is easy for those who view this de­vel­op­ment through po­lit­i­cal lens to be per­suad­ed that this is a de­lib­er­ate move by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to pre­vent the TPP ad­min­is­tra­tion from blos­som­ing in the year lead­ing up to the gen­er­al elec­tion when the two To­ba­go seats are vi­tal to a na­tion­al PNM vic­to­ry.

If this is not in­deed the case, the Gov­ern­ment must ex­plain the re­al rea­son for slic­ing To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­men­tal al­lo­ca­tion by half at a time when it is spend­ing more than be­fore.

To­ba­go may not be get­ting what it wants in this year’s bud­get, but if the aim is to sup­press the is­land’s de­vel­op­ment for po­lit­i­cal gain, then the PNM Gov­ern­ment may very well find that it too could be on the los­ing end when the elec­tion bell is rung.