The Gov­ern­ment has wel­comed the as­sess­ment of the T&T econ­o­my from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), de­scrib­ing the find­ings as a sign of re­newed in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion and a val­i­da­tion of its pol­i­cy agen­da.

The state­ment fol­lows the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the IMF’s 2026 Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion, a rou­tine eval­u­a­tion of a coun­try’s eco­nom­ic health and pol­i­cy frame­work.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, in a news re­lease yes­ter­day, said the IMF’s con­clu­sions high­light a sta­bil­is­ing econ­o­my that is show­ing ear­ly signs of re­cov­ery just over a year af­ter the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, in­fla­tion has re­turned to low lev­els, the coun­try’s ex­ter­nal ac­counts re­main in sur­plus and the bank­ing sec­tor con­tin­ues to be well-cap­i­talised with steady cred­it growth.

These in­di­ca­tors, the min­is­ter not­ed, sig­nal im­proved macro­eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and a strength­en­ing fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

The IMF al­so found that T&T’s for­eign re­serves re­main at ad­e­quate lev­els, es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly five and a half months of im­port cov­er.

This po­si­tion is fur­ther re­in­forced by sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings held in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, which stands around 25 per cent of the coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic.

The re­lease said these buffers are cru­cial in help­ing the coun­try with­stand ex­ter­nal shocks while sup­port­ing eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

“In just over one year in­to our term, we have sta­bilised the de­cline, re­built in­ter­na­tion­al cred­i­bil­i­ty, and repo­si­tioned Trinidad and To­ba­go as a na­tion with strong, sus­tain­able re­cov­ery po­ten­tial,” Tan­coo added.

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment un­der­scored that these im­prove­ments must be viewed against what it de­scribed as a chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in­her­it­ed up­on tak­ing of­fice.

The fi­nance min­is­ter point­ed to a sharp de­cline in of­fi­cial re­serves over the past decade, falling from over US$10 bil­lion in 2015 to just above US$5 bil­lion by ear­ly 2025, along­side a near dou­bling of pub­lic debt.

Em­ploy­ment al­so de­clined dur­ing that pe­ri­od, while sig­nif­i­cant with­drawals were made from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, plac­ing ad­di­tion­al strain on na­tion­al fi­nances.

Tan­coo al­so em­pha­sised that ris­ing glob­al en­er­gy prices present a lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try to re­build its fi­nan­cial buffers and strength­en fis­cal re­silience.

He al­so wel­comed the IMF’s en­dorse­ment of on­go­ing fis­cal re­forms, in­clud­ing ef­forts to im­prove rev­enue col­lec­tion, en­hance pub­lic spend­ing ef­fi­cien­cy, and pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions.

In ad­di­tion, the IMF ac­knowl­edged T&T’s re­moval from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s list of non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions, a de­vel­op­ment the Gov­ern­ment views as a sig­nif­i­cant step in restor­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cred­i­bil­i­ty.

The con­sul­ta­tion fur­ther high­light­ed the im­por­tance of con­tin­ued re­forms in ar­eas such as dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, labour mar­ket flex­i­bil­i­ty, and im­prove­ments to the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in or­der to sus­tain growth mo­men­tum.

While not­ing risks such as glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, en­er­gy sec­tor volatil­i­ty and for­eign ex­change con­straints, the fi­nance min­is­ter said these is­sues are ac­tive­ly be­ing ad­dressed through tar­get­ed pol­i­cy mea­sures.

The min­istry added that the IMF re­port marks a turn­ing point, re­flect­ing progress to­wards eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and a broad­er agen­da of na­tion­al re­new­al, with con­tin­ued ef­forts aimed at ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es and im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens.