The 2027 bud­get must be tied to a long-term eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy, not treat­ed as an­oth­er one-year ex­er­cise, Caribbean En­er­gy Cham­ber CEO Eu­gene Tiah has ar­gued.

Speak­ing with Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day, Tiah main­tained that the an­nu­al bud­get should be a fi­nan­cial ex­pres­sion of the coun­try’s broad­er de­vel­op­ment am­bi­tions, with spend­ing di­rect­ed to­wards sec­tors ca­pa­ble of im­prov­ing liv­ing stan­dards and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth.

His com­ments come as gov­ern­ment rev­enue con­tin­ues to fluc­tu­ate. In its June 2026 Da­ta Pack, the Cen­tral Bank put gov­ern­ment rev­enue at $11.8 bil­lion in the first quar­ter of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year (Oc­to­ber 1 to De­cem­ber 31, 2025), fol­low­ing $12.4 bil­lion in the fourth quar­ter of 2025. Rev­enue stood at $10.5 bil­lion in the first quar­ter of 2025, $12.5 bil­lion in the sec­ond and third quar­ters and TT$12.4 bil­lion in the fourth quar­ter.

Tiah, who served as pres­i­dent of Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd for 13 years, be­lieves the fig­ures un­der­score the need for a more de­lib­er­ate ap­proach to man­ag­ing the coun­try’s rev­enue base.

“If, for ex­am­ple, the coun­try as­pired to im­prove the stan­dard of liv­ing of its cit­i­zens as mea­sured by GDP per capi­ta or hu­man de­vel­op­ment in­dex or what­ev­er in­dex we want to use and the strat­e­gy was to evolve and de­vel­op cer­tain sec­tors where we be­lieve we could be com­pet­i­tive in, the bud­get then should rep­re­sent re­al­ly ex­pen­di­tures in sup­port of that,” Tiah ex­plained.

He ar­gued that this should in­clude poli­cies, en­abling struc­tures and oth­er mea­sures re­quired to de­vel­op those sec­tors over the long term.

Tiah be­lieves the coun­try needs greater clar­i­ty on its de­sired eco­nom­ic fu­ture and how in­di­vid­ual strate­gies con­tribute to achiev­ing it.

“We don’t have a clar­i­ty about what our de­sired fu­ture state is or what our as­pi­ra­tion is and then how do these strate­gies get us there.”

For the en­er­gy sec­tor, Tiah ex­pects 2027 to re­main chal­leng­ing be­fore a more sub­stan­tial in­crease in do­mes­tic gas pro­duc­tion takes ef­fect.

Based on his mod­el­ling of projects al­ready an­nounced, in ac­tive de­vel­op­ment or with fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sions, to­geth­er with ef­forts to ac­cess Venezue­lan gas, Tiah ex­pects gas pro­duc­tion to ex­ceed three bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day in the pe­ri­od af­ter 2027.

He projects pro­duc­tion could peak at 3.4 to 3.5 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day, up from about 2.5 bil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet per day at this time.

Tiah iden­ti­fied the terms and pric­ing of nat­ur­al gas con­tracts as a ma­jor is­sue for the down­stream en­er­gy sec­tor.

He traced the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in con­tract terms from the longer arrange­ments that sup­port­ed ma­jor in­vest­ments to short­er agree­ments.

“In 2017 they moved most of the busi­ness­es from long-term con­tracts, which have been the con­tracts that un­der­pin those ma­jor in­vest­ments which have been ei­ther 15-year or 20-year con­tracts, to much short­er con­tracts, which were five-year con­tracts,” he said.

Those con­tracts moved to three years in 2022 and one year in 2025, with the cur­rent con­tracts com­ing up for re­new­al in 2027.

“One-year con­tracts will not work for any­one, and fur­ther one-year con­tracts at the price struc­ture that was of­fered in 2026 again will be a chal­lenge for the down­stream pro­duc­ers.”

Tiah ex­pects the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble with bet­ter terms as new up­stream de­vel­op­ments in­crease gas avail­abil­i­ty.

“The great ex­pec­ta­tion is that come 2027, with all these new de­vel­op­ments in the up­stream and pro­duc­tion of gas, NGC will come to the ta­ble with a much bet­ter of­fer­ing than it did in 2026, both in terms of a term for the con­tract and a pric­ing struc­ture for the con­tract.”

Fail­ure to im­prove those terms could have con­se­quences for ex­ist­ing down­stream op­er­a­tions, he warned.

“If that doesn’t come about in my view I think what will hap­pen is we will ei­ther see a con­tin­u­a­tion of the methanol sit­u­a­tion with that those plants con­tin­u­ing to be idled, Nu­trien con­tin­u­ing to be idled and we may even see a few oth­ers that may ac­tu­al­ly fall off in 2027.”

Tiah al­so be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment must be de­lib­er­ate about how it al­lo­cates gas be­tween LNG and down­stream in­dus­tries.

“I have al­ways been, and I think this is just com­mon sense, if you’re try­ing to as­sure a cer­tain lev­el of gov­ern­ment rev­enue, it just makes sense to have a di­ver­si­fied port­fo­lio down­stream and hav­ing both LNG and petro­chem­i­cals.”

He ar­gued that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion can re­duce ex­po­sure to com­mod­i­ty price cy­cles.

“Hav­ing a var­ied port­fo­lio of mech­a­nisms for mon­etis­ing the gas helps to di­ver­si­fy and mit­i­gate the risk of putting all our eggs in one bas­ket.”

Tiah al­so called for greater pre­ci­sion in the use of en­er­gy sub­si­dies, ar­gu­ing that broad-based sub­si­dies can en­cour­age in­ef­fi­cien­cy and waste.

He ac­knowl­edged that sub­si­dies can be nec­es­sary where they af­fect the cost of liv­ing and in­fla­tion, but be­lieves they should be tar­get­ed to­wards those who need them most.

“I am NOT against the whole idea of sen­si­bly ap­ply­ing sub­si­dies where they’re need­ed, and they could be help­ful, but I think the way we ap­ply them en­cour­ages a lot of in­ef­fi­cien­cy and waste.”

Tiah point­ed to trans­porta­tion fu­el and elec­tric­i­ty as ex­am­ples, ar­gu­ing that con­sumers with greater ca­pac­i­ty to pay can al­so ben­e­fit from sub­sidised en­er­gy.

He al­so ques­tioned the eco­nom­ics sur­round­ing the coun­try’s re­new­able en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly the cost of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by the planned so­lar project.

Tiah said his cal­cu­la­tions put the true cost of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in the coun­try at about US$0.09 to US$0.12 per kilo­watt-hour when sub­si­dies are re­moved.

The ex­ist­ing elec­tric­i­ty price is about US$0.05 per kilo­watt-hour in some cir­cum­stances, while the pho­to­volta­ic plant was ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty at about US$0.08 or US$0.09 per kilo­watt-hour.

“This is all you know false eco­nom­ics,” Tiah ar­gued. “The false eco­nom­ics is be­cause of these sig­nif­i­cant sub­si­dies that we in­clude for the cur­rent pow­er that we pro­duce, and that is cre­at­ing a sig­nif­i­cant dis­tor­tion.”

He al­so be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment needs greater trans­paren­cy around the com­mod­i­ty price as­sump­tions used to con­struct the bud­get.

The 2026 Bud­get was based on an oil price of US$73.25 per bar­rel and nat­ur­al gas at US$4.25.

Rather than de­bat­ing whether the as­sump­tions should be mar­gin­al­ly high­er or low­er, Tiah wants the method­ol­o­gy be­hind the fore­casts to be dis­closed.

“What would be help­ful is maybe more trans­paren­cy on say­ing, okay, we’ve used this bas­ket of fore­casts; we’ve not, the open; we’ve high and low fore­casts we have used these con­sul­tants’ base case fore­casts, and this is what we’re bas­ing it on.”

Tiah re­ject­ed the sug­ges­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor is sim­ply dwin­dling, point­ing in­stead to the ex­pect­ed in­crease in gas pro­duc­tion while ac­knowl­edg­ing the long-term need to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

“There is al­ways go­ing to be this strong im­per­a­tive to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and to not be as re­liant on it.”

He wants that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion trans­lat­ed in­to mea­sur­able tar­gets.

“If there was an am­bi­tion to grow the tourism sec­tor then there should be some bench­mark of what con­tri­bu­tion, so there should be, you know, some strong pic­ture that says look you know, these are the tar­gets we have an am­bi­tion right here’s how our cur­rent econ­o­my is cur­rent­ly struc­tured; here’s how we see it in five years.”

For Tiah, the big­ger prob­lem is the ab­sence of con­ti­nu­ity across po­lit­i­cal cy­cles.

“We al­so have to have a chart, I mean ad­dress this kind of five-year cy­cle chal­lenge which is, we have a new group com­ing in, and they poo-poo what­ev­er ex­ist­ed be­fore and they have a new plan, and then we keep do­ing that over and over, and we end up go­ing nowhere be­cause, in­cu­bat­ing new sec­tors or to grow new sec­tors re­quires a long-term com­mit­ment.”

He be­lieves longer-term na­tion­al ob­jec­tives need pro­tec­tion from changes in gov­ern­ment.

“Con­cern­ing longer-term as­pi­ra­tions of the coun­try which re­quire firm com­mit­ments over long pe­ri­ods of time to evolve and de­vel­op it, there has to be a way of pro­tect­ing that against po­lit­i­cal cy­cles.”

On fu­ture en­er­gy in­vest­ment, Tiah does not ex­pect T&T to at­tract new down­stream petro­chem­i­cal plants with­out long-term, com­mer­cial­ly vi­able gas con­tracts.

“I am clear that you will see no new down­stream petro­chem­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties in T&T be­cause it just doesn’t make eco­nom­ic sense to in­vest for 20 years with­out sup­port­ing gas con­tracts.”

He be­lieves ex­ist­ing LNG and petro­chem­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties can con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing if ad­e­quate gas sup­ply and con­tract terms are se­cured, but warned that the coun­try must weigh the wider eco­nom­ic val­ue of dif­fer­ent us­es of nat­ur­al gas.

Tiah point­ed out that petro­chem­i­cal plants gen­er­ate greater lo­cal ac­tiv­i­ty through main­te­nance, op­er­a­tions and con­tract­ed ser­vices than LNG fa­cil­i­ties us­ing the same vol­ume of gas.

“These are fac­tors I think that, of course, need all to be in­form­ing de­ci­sion-mak­ing go­ing for­ward, and I do hope that the NGC in its ap­proach go­ing for­ward is go­ing to be in­formed by all of the sup­port­ing analy­sis, and so that is re­quired to make sen­si­ble de­ci­sions.”