Dr Winford James
Max Albert and I continue our discussions on the Tobago Autonomy Question.
Last week, we invited the reader to consider the Statement of Case which gave rise to the Dispute Resolution Commission. We ended by asking the question that has hovered over the Commission’s work for more than two decades: how did the fiscal reasoning surrounding Tobago move from a population-based starting point of 4.03 per cent to an upper boundary of 6.9 per cent? The documents assembled around the case reveal that Tobago’s claim rested upon a developed fiscal architecture. Recurrent needs, development requirements, locally generated revenue, predictable national transfers, borrowing capacity, and debt sustainability were treated as parts of one economic system. The percentages must therefore be read against that larger intellectual framework.
The Statement of Case establishes the problem. Tobago’s recurrent appropriation was about three per cent of the national recurrent budget in 1998, approximately 2.4 per cent in 1998/1999, and approximately 2.5 per cent in 1999/2000. But development allocations moved differently.
In 1999/2000, Tobago’s development appropriation was approximately five per cent of the national development budget. Yet the Assembly submitted development estimates of approximately $1.199 billion and received only $92 million. After two quarters, about $11 million had actually been released.
These figures illuminate the constitutional argument. Section 43 required consideration of Tobago’s financial and developmental needs together with its physical separation, isolation from the principal national growth centres, the absence of Trinidad’s multiplier effects, and other disadvantages faced by Tobago residents. Population alone could not capture those statutory considerations.
The supporting financial papers then moved the argument from constitutional principle to economic method. They attempted to identify the minimum recurrent resources required for Tobago and convert that minimum into a total revenue requirement after allowing for the development component of the budget. They proposed that the Assembly’s total budget be computed by at least the following formula:
“Total revenue equals the minimum necessary recurrent revenues (and hence minimum recurrent spending) multiplied by the reciprocal of one minus the share of development revenues in the Tobago budget.”
The next proposition is equally significant: Tobago’s share could then be expressed as a ratio of national revenues. The same logic was proposed for determining the portion of national loan capacity which Tobago might properly invoke.
This is more serious than “population equals allocation”. It sought predictability. The financial analysis linked a predictable revenue stream to creditworthiness: if Tobago could demonstrate reliable revenues, it could be assessed as a credit risk, approach private capital markets, and finance development with less dependence upon annual discretion from the centre.
The debt-capacity documents reinforce that point. They model projected revenues, recurrent and development transfers, bond issues, principal and interest payments, and debt service measured against total Tobago revenues over a long horizon. The Assembly was therefore testing whether development borrowing could be sustained. The grant-and-loan proposals likewise contemplated financing major interventions through national transfers, locally generated income, grants, and borrowing.
This connected directly to the Tobago Development Plan. The Statement of Case records that the Plan and its Medium-Term Policy Framework were intended to drive budget submissions and correct Tobago’s historical disadvantages. International development institutions had been engaged and grant support attracted to refine aspects of the Plan. The fiscal case was joined to an actual development strategy; it was not a detached argument about a percentage.
We must acknowledge Dr Vanus James, whose economic work during this period helped shape the analytical thinking around Tobago’s development. The significance of that contribution lies in treating Tobago as an economy capable of being planned, measured, financed, and assessed—not merely as an administrative dependency awaiting an annual transfer.
The same perspective explains the insistence upon revenue collection. The Policy Research and Development Institute estimated that revenues collectable in Tobago could reach as much as $450 million annually. The Assembly also pursued overdraft facilities, term borrowing, and grants as complements to transfers from the Consolidated Fund, while arguing that administrative obstacles repeatedly frustrated those avenues.
Where, then, do 4.03 per cent and 6.9 per cent fit in? The lower figure sat naturally as a population-based starting point, but the economic case before and around the Commission was plainly larger than population. It incorporated statutory responsibilities, development deficits, recurrent needs, revenue capacity, borrowing capacity, insularity, and predictable financing. Those considerations provide an intelligible basis for moving above a population floor.
What the surviving papers still do not show, however, is a single published operation in which each factor is assigned a numerical weight and the answer 6.9 mechanically appears. We should not invent such an equation. The responsible conclusion is that the documentary record explains the fiscal logic within which the range was constructed, even if the Commission’s precise numerical weighting is not disclosed in the material presently available.
That distinction is not a weakness. It is the essence of serious inquiry. The DRC process recognised that Tobago’s constitutional responsibilities required a defensible fiscal space within the Republic, while the surrounding economic work demonstrates that Tobago’s advocates were thinking in terms of need, development, revenue, creditworthiness, and sustainability.
For too long, the national conversation has treated 4.03 and 6.9 as though the numbers themselves were the argument. They were not. The deeper case was that autonomy without adequate, predictable and development-oriented financial capacity is autonomy largely in name. The percentages mattered enormously, but they were the numerical expression of a much larger case.
But enough has been said; the new fiscal year is approaching, and Tobago must get its fair share. In this case, if nothing else, the politics demand it.
Dr Winford James is a retired UWI lecturer who has been analysing issues in education, language, development and politics in T&T and the wider Caribbean on radio and TV since the 1970s.
