Raphael John-Lall

Busi­ness lead­ers in south Trinidad are de­scrib­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s pre­sen­ta­tion for fis­cal year 2026 as a “good bud­get.”

The $59.2 bil­lion bud­get was pre­sent­ed on Mon­day by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

Sev­er­al busi­ness cham­ber lead­ers in South Trinidad spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian and gave their ini­tial im­pres­sions of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan for the up­com­ing fis­cal year.

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Daphne Bartlett is giv­ing the Gov­ern­ment a “good grade” for the bud­get as she praised the its abil­i­ty to keep the deficit down to an es­ti­mat­ed min­i­mum of $3.865 bil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, based on com­mod­i­ty price es­ti­mates of US$73.25 per bar­rel of oil and nat­ur­al gas as­sump­tion of US$4.25 per MMB­TU, they ex­pect to­tal rev­enue of $55.367 bil­lion and to­tal ex­pen­di­ture of $59.232 bil­lion.

“To me they did put a lot of thought in­to prepar­ing this bud­get. They touched on all the im­por­tant ar­eas of our dai­ly lives. The deficit is much less than ex­pect­ed and that would be at­trib­uted to cut­ting out the wastage and over pric­ing of projects etc. A good ex­am­ple is the re­struc­tur­ing of the CEPEP pro­gramme. No more ghost gangs. A full day’s pay for the work­ers and they would be put in­to pro­duc­tive work,” Bartlett said.

She al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed the Gov­ern­ment on tak­ing steps to at­tempt to re­duce the food im­port bill and at the same time re­mov­ing VAT on some ba­sic food items.

“He stressed the im­por­tance of our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and the agro-pro­cess­ing plants. I was very hap­py to hear that he is pro­mot­ing a buy lo­cal cam­paign in an at­tempt to re­duce our food im­por­ta­tion bill. I was ex­pect­ing a neg­a­tive list be­cause we should not be im­port­ing items which can be grown here. For ex­am­ple co­conut wa­ter, pump­kin, wa­ter­mel­on let­tuce etc. He re­moved VAT from these items which in­di­cates to me that we can still im­port them at a low­er price. We have to pro­tect our farm­ers.”

She al­so said the Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to take mea­sures to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my by fo­cus­ing on tourism.

“He touched in tourism which would be a cash cow for us. The yacht­ing in­dus­try can grow ex­po­nen­tial­ly if some at­ten­tion is paid to it. We are a safe haven for yachties since we are hard­ly af­fect­ed by hur­ri­canes. We need to make our coun­try more tourist friend­ly so as to at­tract many more of them.”

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh told the Busi­ness Guardian that he is gen­er­al­ly sat­is­fied with the mea­sures an­nounced on Mon­day.

He re­ferred to the re­duc­tion in price of su­per gaso­line by $1.00 as “good news” for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty,

“Es­pe­cial­ly those that com­prise the MSME Sec­tor and of course, the en­tire coun­try. Trans­port is a ma­jor ex­pense item. Many small busi­ness­es use their per­son­al ve­hi­cles for trans­porta­tion ser­vices. This mea­sure will as­sist in keep­ing in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures down and fur­ther en­cour­age com­pet­i­tive­ness from this sec­tor.”

He al­so ex­pects the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit from the pub­lic ser­vants’ 10 per cent salary in­crease.

“This will have an im­me­di­ate pos­i­tive im­pact of more dis­pos­able in­come be­com­ing avail­able to deal with high­er liv­ing costs. It will al­so have a pos­i­tive mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect on re­tail trade, a wel­come boost for busi­ness.”

Singh al­so said that VAT col­lec­tions and record­ing have of­ten been de­scribed as oner­ous by those in the SME Sec­tor and re­funds re­main out­stand­ing to many en­ter­pris­es.

“The re­moval of VAT and its re­place­ment by a sales tax may re­sult in a win-win sit­u­a­tion. The Gov­ern­ment would get the rev­enue di­rect­ly. This would re­sult in low­er ac­count­ing costs to busi­ness­es. Cash­flow which is the lifeblood of any busi­ness would be less com­pro­mised as they would not have to wait on VAT re­funds. We look for­ward to re­ceiv­ing out­stand­ing VAT re­funds in the near fu­ture. We sug­gest that the Sales Tax per­cent­age be in line with oth­er tax regimes where these sys­tems ex­ist.”

On the down­side, he not­ed that the $0.05 elec­tri­cal sur­charge on com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al prop­er­ties will have an in­creased cost to land­lords.

“This cost bur­den may have to be shared be­tween the own­er and the con­sumer.”

Re­shap­ing fis­cal pri­or­i­ties

Pres­i­dent of the Siparia Busi­ness Cham­ber Emer­son Ched­die told the Busi­ness Guardian that the 2026 Na­tion­al Bud­get is a bold at­tempt to re­cal­i­brate T&T’s fis­cal pri­or­i­ties to­ward eq­ui­ty, re­silience and in­clu­sive growth.

“As the first full-year bud­get un­der the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, it of­fers a glimpse in­to the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy ar­chi­tec­ture and its com­mit­ment to so­cial jus­tice. We com­mend the ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment in nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex eco­nom­ic land­scape T&T cur­rent­ly faces. This bud­get ar­rives at a piv­otal mo­ment, and we ap­pre­ci­ate the em­pha­sis placed on re­build­ing na­tion­al re­silience.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment’s pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of chil­dren, low-in­come house­holds, and food se­cu­ri­ty is both moral­ly sound and eco­nom­i­cal­ly strate­gic.

“The $6.2 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion—in­clud­ing ex­pan­sion of the School Nu­tri­tion Pro­gramme and up­grades to ear­ly child­hood cen­tres—sig­nals a strong in­vest­ment in hu­man cap­i­tal. Like­wise, the $4.1 bil­lion di­rect­ed to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices will strength­en the so­cial safe­ty net and up­lift vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.”

He added that while the bud­get out­lines am­bi­tious goals for job cre­ation and eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion, fur­ther de­tails on sec­toral strate­gies will be im­por­tant.

“The $1.2 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try in­cludes sup­port for SMEs and ex­port de­vel­op­ment—crit­i­cal en­gines of growth. With tar­get­ed in­vest­ments in dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, agro-pro­cess­ing, and re­new­able en­er­gy, T&T can un­lock new op­por­tu­ni­ties and re­duce its de­pen­dence on hy­dro­car­bons.”

The pro­ject­ed deficit, while no­table, is framed with­in a broad­er strat­e­gy of fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, he said.

“The Gov­ern­ment’s in­tent to im­prove tax col­lec­tion and broad­en the rev­enue base is en­cour­ag­ing. A medi­um-term fis­cal frame­work would fur­ther strength­en con­fi­dence in the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of these ini­tia­tives.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said the UNC Gov­ern­ment’s pledge to en­hance trans­paren­cy through per­for­mance-based bud­get­ing and quar­ter­ly re­port­ing is a pos­i­tive step to­ward re­build­ing pub­lic trust.

“The TT$950 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment sup­ports the de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al re­sults frame­work, which—if im­ple­ment­ed ef­fec­tive­ly—can im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty and pol­i­cy co­her­ence.”

Out­go­ing pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal/Debe Busi­ness Cham­ber Moti­lal Ram­s­ingh told the Busi­ness Guardian that he was con­tent­ed with the mea­sures out­lined.

“Pe­nal Debe is poised to see an in­crease in in­vest­ment through sev­er­al ini­tia­tives such as the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way (Debe to Mon De­sir Seg­ment), open­ing of the Debe cam­pus with ex­pand­ed cur­ricu­lum and dou­bling of the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions De­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tions. It is ex­pect­ed that stalled projects such as schools and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion’s of­fice will recom­mence. Fis­cal mea­sures men­tioned are wel­come and will gen­er­ate lit­tle op­po­si­tion.”

Pres­i­dent of the Gas­par­il­lo Busi­ness Cham­ber Samuel George told the Busi­ness Guardian that the Gov­ern­ment was able to solve some crit­i­cal prob­lems that the coun­try has.

“They were able to find mon­ey where no­body thought they could find mon­ey. Gen­er­at­ing rev­enue and low­er­ing tax­a­tion on the peo­ple it­self.”

Some of the pos­i­tive mea­sures in the bud­get, that George agreed with, in­clude the re­duc­tion in the price of su­per gaso­line, re­moval of VAT on some food items and ini­tia­tives for in­creased ve­hi­cle own­er­ship.