Tancoo admits Budget error in TRHA allocation

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has ad­mit­ted that an er­ror was made in the 2027 Bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA), while as­sur­ing that the au­thor­i­ty will re­ceive enough fund­ing to meet its op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

The ad­mis­sion came dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee re­view of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) bud­get al­lo­ca­tions, fol­low­ing sus­tained ques­tion­ing from Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert over the sharp re­duc­tion in fund­ing for To­ba­go’s pri­ma­ry health­care provider.

Tan­coo ac­knowl­edged the mis­take af­ter Im­bert queried why the TRHA had been al­lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $239.7 mil­lion for fis­cal 2027, de­spite his­tor­i­cal­ly re­quir­ing about $700 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to op­er­ate.