De­spite a no­tice­able slow­down in in­fla­tion in April 2026, food in­fla­tion con­tin­ued to rise.

The Cen­tral Bank’s Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port (MPR) for May 2026, stat­ed that in­fla­tion slowed with head­line in­fla­tion drop­ping to 0.4 per cent (y-o-y) in April 2026.

The re­port said, “In April 2026, core in­fla­tion slowed to 0.2 per cent, while food in­fla­tion inched up to 1.2 per cent (year-on-year).”

The MPR re­port not­ed that con­sumer, busi­ness and re­al es­tate mort­gage lend­ing de­cel­er­at­ed in March 2026 by 5.2 per cent, 3.7 per cent, and 4.4 per cent.

De­spite this, the re­port stat­ed banks still en­joy strong liq­uid­i­ty as the re­port out­lined, “Com­mer­cial banks’ ex­cess liq­uid­i­ty re­mained sta­ble while in­ter­est rates edged up.”

The re­port stat­ed that the lo­cal mar­ket for for­eign cur­ren­cy re­mained tight. The MPR said, “Pur­chas­es and sales of for­eign ex­change by au­tho­rised deal­ers de­clined over Jan­u­ary to April 2026 com­pared to one year ear­li­er (10.4 per cent and 0.6 per cent re­spec­tive­ly).”

The re­port said TT-US trea­sury dif­fer­en­tial im­proved to -91 bps in April 2026 while ex­cess re­serves re­mained steady, av­er­ag­ing $4.4 bil­lion dai­ly in April 2026.

The MPR al­so point­ed out that T&T’s ex­port earn­ings de­clined in Q4 2025 (8.1 per cent), ow­ing to damp­ened per­for­mance in both the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors while eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty soft­ened. In Q3 2025, the MPR not­ed re­al GDP reached 0.1 per cent, on ac­count of ex­pan­sions in the en­er­gy sec­tor (3.4 per cent), which out­weighed the de­cline in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor (-1.1 per cent).

Mean­while, in the en­er­gy sec­tor, the re­port said re­fin­ing and crude oil pro­duc­tion im­proved dur­ing the third quar­ter of 2025 to 18.8 per cent and 2.6 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly (y-o-y).

The Cen­tral Bank re­port al­so not­ed gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing slowed as it stat­ed, “Over the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2025 to April 2026, the pri­ma­ry debt mar­ket record­ed three bond is­sues rais­ing $2.3 bn.”

The re­port al­so con­firmed that labour mar­ket con­di­tions im­proved, al­beit mar­gin­al­ly, dur­ing the sec­ond half of 2025.

Point­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, the re­port stat­ed there had been a mod­est im­prove­ment in labour mar­ket con­di­tions over the sec­ond half of 2025, along­side con­tin­ued eas­ing in labour mar­ket par­tic­i­pa­tion rel­a­tive to the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

The re­port stat­ed, “The un­em­ploy­ment rate av­er­aged 4.6 per cent dur­ing the pe­ri­od Ju­ly to De­cem­ber 2025, down from 4.8 per cent one year ear­li­er. Over the six-month pe­ri­od, the labour force con­tract­ed by 7.5 thou­sand per­sons, re­flect­ing a de­cline in the num­ber of em­ployed per­sons (5.9 thou­sand per­sons) and a fall in the num­ber of per­sons with­out jobs and ac­tive­ly seek­ing work (1.7 thou­sand).”

The Cen­tral Bank main­tained the re­po rate at 3.50 per cent.