Farley 'gutted' by Tobago's budget allocation

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has reg­is­tered strong dis­agree­ment with the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion grant­ed to the is­land in the 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get, say­ing he felt “gut­ted” by cuts to cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment and a re­duc­tion in To­ba­go’s over­all per­cent­age of the na­tion­al purse.

Ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the me­dia at the Red House in Port-of-Spain short­ly af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo pre­sent­ed the bud­get, Au­gus­tine re­vealed that the di­rect al­lo­ca­tion to the THA had de­clined from TT$2.9 bil­lion in the pre­vi­ous fis­cal year to just over TT$2.7 bil­lion for fis­cal 2027.

Fore­most among his ob­jec­tions was the steep de­cline in de­vel­op­ment fund­ing, which he stressed is es­sen­tial to trans­form­ing the is­land's in­fra­struc­ture and di­ver­si­fy­ing its econ­o­my.