The staff team from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) that is vis­it­ing T&T for the 2026 Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion high­light­ed sev­er­al pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments in the T&T econ­o­my, ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease yes­ter­day from the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

In out­lin­ing the de­vel­op­ments, the min­istry said the IMF team not­ed the start of an eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, dri­ven in par­tic­u­lar by con­tin­ued strength in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, no­tably ser­vices and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The min­istry al­so said the IMF al­so point­ed to T&T’s favourable medi­um-term prospects, with an­tic­i­pat­ed de­vel­op­ments in the en­er­gy sec­tor pro­ject­ed to raise re­al GDP growth to around 2.9 per cent in 2027 and 3.5 per cent in 2028, while these es­ti­mates do not yet re­flect po­ten­tial up­side from fu­ture Venezuela-re­lat­ed de­vel­op­ments.

The IMF team al­so point­ed to the progress that has been made in T&T’s pub­lic fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, which was re­flect­ed in the 2026 Bud­get mea­sures aimed at strength­en­ing rev­enue mo­bil­i­sa­tion, im­prov­ing ex­pen­di­ture ef­fi­cien­cy, and sup­port­ing vul­ner­a­ble groups, as well as coura­geous re­forms tak­en to im­prove the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem, the min­istry said.

In a news re­lease, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo thanked the IMF staff team for their con­struc­tive en­gage­ment, high-qual­i­ty analy­sis and col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach through­out the vis­it.

He al­so wel­comed the IMF’s recog­ni­tion that, from the very out­set of its tenure, this Gov­ern­ment un­der­took a clear-eyed as­sess­ment of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and moved swift­ly to im­ple­ment bold and trans­for­ma­tive re­forms.

Tan­coo reaf­firmed that, “Un­der the lead­er­ship of the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the ad­min­is­tra­tion—guid­ed by a clear plan and vi­sion—is firm­ly com­mit­ted to plac­ing T&T on a stronger, more sus­tain­able path. It will con­tin­ue to ad­vance sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth, dri­ve di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, and strength­en the na­tion’s stand­ing on the glob­al stage — build­ing a stronger coun­try.”

The Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion is the stan­dard an­nu­al re­view con­duct­ed by the IMF with all its mem­ber coun­tries.