GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Pic­ture a young en­tre­pre­neur in Ari­ma try­ing to or­der equip­ment from a sup­pli­er in Eu­rope.

For months, every trans­ac­tion has been slowed down or flagged for ex­tra checks, mak­ing her won­der why do­ing sim­ple busi­ness across bor­ders sud­den­ly feels like pulling teeth.

She isn’t alone—many cit­i­zens, from peo­ple send­ing mon­ey for their chil­dren study­ing in Eu­rope to small busi­ness­es seek­ing for­eign in­vest­ment, have qui­et­ly felt the rip­ple ef­fects of T&T be­ing on the EU’s tax black­list.

Black­list­ing con­strained in­vest­ment, lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties and weak­ened con­fi­dence in the fi­nan­cial sys­tem, cre­at­ing re­al-world com­pli­ca­tions for or­di­nary peo­ple nav­i­gat­ing glob­al fi­nan­cial chan­nels.

Now, with T&T of­fi­cial­ly re­moved from the EU list af­ter up­grad­ing its fi­nan­cial trans­paren­cy and align­ing with glob­al tax gov­er­nance stan­dards, the coun­try is once again viewed as a re­li­able in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner.

While the news marks the end of a long diplo­mat­ic strug­gle, econ­o­mists Dr Ralph Hen­ry and Dr Jamelia Har­ris are look­ing be­yond the head­lines to ex­plain what this “clean slate” ac­tu­al­ly means for the av­er­age cit­i­zen and the coun­try’s long-term growth.

Hen­ry stressed the de­ci­sion sig­nals to the world that T&T is no longer seen as a ju­ris­dic­tion vul­ner­a­ble to mon­ey laun­der­ing, il­lic­it fi­nan­cial flows, or the har­bour­ing of “ill-got­ten gains.”

In­stead, the coun­try is be­ing re­cast as a place where le­git­i­mate busi­ness could be con­duct­ed with­out sus­pi­cion.

That shift, he said, car­ries rip­ple ef­fects across the econ­o­my.

“It means we are seen as a coun­try with which one can con­duct busi­ness,” he ex­plained adding,“We are no longer viewed as a lo­ca­tion for mon­ey laun­der­ing and har­bour­ing yields from drug traf­fick­ing and that kind of thing.”

That per­cep­tion mat­ters as when in­sti­tu­tions abroad trust the in­tegri­ty of a coun­try’s fi­nan­cial sys­tem, they are more will­ing to do busi­ness with its banks, its gov­ern­ment and its cit­i­zens.

For or­di­nary peo­ple, one of the most im­me­di­ate ben­e­fits may be the move­ment of mon­ey across bor­ders—from re­mit­tances to small busi­ness pay­ments to every­day wire trans­fers.

Hen­ry ac­knowl­edged that some pa­per­work and ver­i­fi­ca­tion would con­tin­ue, but the over­all flow should be­come eas­i­er and less ob­struct­ed.

“If you re­ceive re­mit­tances, it should be eas­i­er,” he said.

The ver­i­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments that banks im­pose when mon­ey en­ters the coun­try—iden­ti­fy­ing the sender, con­firm­ing the ba­sis of the funds, de­ter­min­ing whether it is a loan, a gift, or pay­ment for work—would re­main.

“But what changes is that the in­sti­tu­tions look­ing in at us can see that we have those pro­ce­dures in place,” he added.

With that in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence re­stored, the trans­ac­tion process be­comes less sus­pect and there­fore, less like­ly to trig­ger de­lays or red flags.

Yet, the econ­o­mist cau­tioned that the re­moval from the black­list does not elim­i­nate the need for doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“I don’t think you’ll be re­lieved of that,” he said, re­fer­ring to the forms re­quired by banks for wire trans­fers and for­eign pay­ments.

The sys­tem has been built to track sources of funds, and that would con­tin­ue. The dif­fer­ence is that now T&T’s com­pli­ance frame­work is ac­knowl­edged in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, re­duc­ing the like­li­hood that rou­tine fi­nan­cial in­ter­ac­tions are viewed with sus­pi­cion.

Be­yond per­son­al bank­ing, Hen­ry ar­gued the biggest po­ten­tial prize for the T&T econ­o­my is for­eign in­vest­ment.

When a coun­try is black­list­ed, in­vestors hes­i­tate, loans be­come hard­er to se­cure and for­eign com­pa­nies avoid risk.

The clean bill of health changes that.

“For­eign in­vest­ment in­to the coun­try is made eas­i­er,” he said.

When firms abroad de­cide to bring cap­i­tal to T&T—whether to build a plant, ex­pand op­er­a­tions, or launch new ven­tures—there is now a clear­er path.

In­vestors could prove the le­git­i­ma­cy of their funds, the au­thor­i­ties can vet it with con­fi­dence, and prof­its made lo­cal­ly could be repa­tri­at­ed trans­par­ent­ly.

That in­flow, he said, is des­per­ate­ly need­ed at this stage of the econ­o­my.

With the gov­ern­ment fac­ing tight fis­cal con­straints, and with rev­enue from the en­er­gy sec­tor low­er this fis­cal year and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion still slow, pri­vate cap­i­tal—both lo­cal and for­eign—must take on a larg­er role in eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion, Hen­ry ar­gues.

“We re­al­ly need a lot of in­vest­ment,” he em­pha­sised not­ing, “The gov­ern­ment is strapped for funds.”

Still, he be­lieves the ad­van­tage of in­ter­na­tion­al ap­proval would on­ly trans­late in­to growth if gov­ern­ment strength­ens the wider in­vest­ment cli­mate.

Build­ing on the foun­da­tion of trust, econ­o­mist Dr Dave Seer­at­tan high­light­ed sev­er­al tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits that now ac­crue to the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

Re­moval from the list im­proves ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets, mak­ing the coun­try el­i­gi­ble for crit­i­cal fund­ing from the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank and spe­cialised EU cli­mate fi­nance pro­grammes.

This new found cred­it­wor­thi­ness is ex­pect­ed to low­er bor­row­ing costs across the board by re­duc­ing the per­ceived risk of the ju­ris­dic­tion, Seer­at­tan said, adding that it strength­ens trade part­ner­ships with EU mem­ber states, di­rect­ly sup­port­ing T&T’s com­pet­i­tive­ness as a des­ti­na­tion for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI).

Turn­ing point for econ­o­my

While Har­ris echoed that the delist­ing is ex­pect­ed to boost in­vestor con­fi­dence, re­store cred­i­bil­i­ty in reg­u­la­to­ry in­sti­tu­tions and re­open op­por­tu­ni­ties that had been con­strained while the coun­try re­mained black­list­ed, she not­ed the broad­er pow­er struc­tures that these types of “black lists” rep­re­sent.

She said be­hind the diplo­mat­ic con­grat­u­la­tions lie a larg­er struc­tur­al con­cern fa­mil­iar to many de­vel­op­ing na­tions, stat­ing that while this coun­try has suc­cess­ful­ly re­formed to meet cur­rent de­mands, there re­mains a per­sis­tent risk that the goal­posts may move again, forc­ing small na­tions back in­to a cy­cle of re­ac­tive re­form.

“Small coun­tries like TT (and most de­vel­op­ing coun­tries) are rule tak­ers in the glob­al pow­er struc­ture. Al­though our eco­nom­ic for­tunes are in­flu­enced by these arrange­ments, we of­ten do not have a seat at the ta­ble when these things are es­tab­lished or mod­i­fied. So al­though we have been re­moved from the list and should cel­e­brate this win, the cri­te­ria can be changed at any point the EU de­cides to change it. In such a case, we will once again be try­ing to re­form to meet the new de­mands,” Har­ris ex­plained. 

Seer­at­tan al­so agreed this “clean bill of health” is not a per­ma­nent guar­an­tee, not­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union con­ducts bian­nu­al eval­u­a­tions, and his­to­ry shows that progress can be frag­ile.

For in­stance, Viet­nam was re­moved from the greylist in late 2025 on­ly to find it­self back on the black­list by ear­ly 2026 af­ter stan­dards were al­lowed to lapse.

There­fore, Seer­at­tan said the chal­lenge for T&T is to in­sti­tu­tion­alise these trans­paren­cy gains and use them as a plat­form for broad­er im­prove­ments in gov­er­nance, stat­ing that by sus­tain­ing this progress, the coun­try could en­sure bet­ter long-term out­comes for its cit­i­zens in terms of em­ploy­ment, in­come lev­els and a more sta­ble sup­ply of for­eign ex­change.

Har­ris fur­ther de­scribed the coun­try’s re­cent re­moval from an in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial black­list as “a long-await­ed turn­ing point,” not­ing that the achieve­ment re­flects ef­forts span­ning two ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“The for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion start­ed the process and did some of the heavy lift­ing. The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has been able to see it over the fin­ish line,” she said.

Har­ris, too, em­pha­sised that while the delist­ing rep­re­sents an im­por­tant sym­bol­ic and pro­ce­dur­al vic­to­ry, the eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions would un­fold grad­u­al­ly, adding that the im­pact on the labour mar­ket, how­ev­er, would de­pend large­ly on how and where for­eign in­vest­ment ma­te­ri­alis­es.