A four member team of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) will meet Finance Minister Colm Imbert and other senior officers of his ministry on Wednesday (sept 14) to have pre budget discussions on Tobago’s 2017 budget requests.

The meeting takes place at the Ministry of Finance starting at 1.00 p.m.

The Assembly’s team will be led by Chief Secretary Orville London and includes Finance Secretary Assemblyman Joel Jack, Chief Administrator Raye Sandy and Administrator in the Division of Finance Claire Davidson-Williams.

London told reporters at Wednesday’s weekly post Executive Council media briefing at the Administrative Complex, Calder Hall that he expects there will be a discussion during which the THA team will be brought up to date on the present financial situation in the country. In addition he expects the meeting will deal with the Assembly’s request for a “piece of the pie” that would be available to Trinidad and Tobago.

He added: “I am not aware of what the results would be but we would make the strongest case possible for the people of Tobago bearing in mind that we are living in straightened circumstances and there will have to be sacrifices and we in Tobago will not be immune to the kind of challenges which the country would face in fiscal 2017.”

Secretary of Finance and Enterprise Development Assemblyman Joel Jack presented a 2017 budget for Tobago of $5.3 Billion to the Assembly legislature on June 21 2016. He explained that of this sum, $3.209B will be for recurrent expenditure, $2.03 B for the development programme, $80.3M for URP and $54M for CEPEP.