Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A plan for the next five years - to turn Trinidad and To­ba­go around.

That’s what Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo says the 2026 Bud­get will be and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar has promised that Gov­ern­ment will try to make every­body hap­py.

Gov­ern­ment sources spec­u­lat­ed yes­ter­day that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion’s first Bud­get to­day will have pos­i­tive word for var­i­ous sec­tors - in­clud­ing re­duced gas prices, which the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment promised and didn’t de­liv­er.

This, ahead of this af­ter­noon’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the new Gov­ern­ment’s first Bud­get since be­ing elect­ed in April.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, at her Di­vali func­tion last Sat­ur­day, hint­ed that Gov­ern­ment would “try” to make every­body hap­py or give every­body some­thing. Thank­ing her team, the PM told at­ten­dees she hoped that af­ter to­day, “you’ll still be thank­ing all of us.” See page 6.

Tan­coo, an econ­o­mist, will present the Bud­get for the 2025/2026 fis­cal year at 1.30 pm in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Dur­ing the Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship/UNC gov­ern­ment tenure, Tan­coo was the fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. Sub­se­quent­ly, when the UNC was in op­po­si­tion, Tan­coo was the fi­nance and econ­o­my spokesman.

Ad­dress­ing last Sat­ur­day’s Di­vali Na­gar pro­gramme - where Tan­coo sang - he told me­dia the UNC had a track record and it was not the first time it had been in gov­ern­ment. He not­ed he’d been fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er to the PM, “and we turned the coun­try around then.”

He said the UNC has ex­pe­ri­enced, com­pe­tent peo­ple with the po­lit­i­cal will and this was what would be seen com­ing for­ward in the Bud­get, “… A plan for the next five years.”

He ad­mit­ted prepar­ing the Bud­get was a chal­lenge, as he’d pre­vi­ous­ly as­sessed and cri­tiqued bud­gets and had plans on how to take T&T for­ward.

”I now have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to put those plans and all that ex­pe­ri­ence to good use,” Tan­coo added.

He said he hadn’t thought “we ‘re as bad­ly off as we ac­tu­al­ly are,” but said the in­ten­tion is to “build from wher­ev­er we are up­wards.” Tan­coo said when he be­came Fi­nance Min­is­ter, he found T&T was fi­nan­cial­ly de­pressed.

Apart from rec­om­men­da­tions re­ceived by Gov­ern­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­mand of Bud­get con­tents and Tan­coo’s com­po­si­tion, there’s been in­put from the rest of Gov­ern­ment’s Fi­nance team - Min­is­ters in Fi­nance Kennedy Swarats­ingh (Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment) and Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj (Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism), Tan­coo’s ad­vis­er and oth­ers.

Low­er gas prices?

Gov­ern­ment sources yes­ter­day tipped the Bud­get as a “turn­around” pack­age geared to put T&T on the road to re­cov­ery…from PNM’s man­age­ment.”

It’s de­scribed as a tight re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion pack­age with eco­nom­ic sup­port pri­or­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar plans for the pub­lic and strate­gic ini­tia­tives to gen­er­ate in­come. This in­cludes ex­pand­ed di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, new rev­enue streams/di­rec­tions and tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy sec­tors. Sources cit­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s meet­ing last Fri­day with en­er­gy part­ners as part of the dri­ve.

Tan­coo’s Bud­get is be­ing pre­sent­ed amid oil prices that have con­tin­ued in the US$60s up to yes­ter­day, when it ranged be­tween US$ 58/64 per bar­rel. Prices have fluc­tu­at­ed be­tween US$60–$70 a bar­rel since mid-June. This was at­trib­uted to sup­ply-de­mand dy­nam­ics, geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts and chang­ing trade poli­cies.

Among Bud­get mea­sures, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials spec­u­lat­ed that the price of gas - Pre­mi­um or Su­per- may be re­duced. But this would not ap­ply to diesel fu­el.

They said a price re­duc­tion could help mo­torists and steady the cost of liv­ing.

Cur­rent­ly Su­per, Pre­mi­um, and Diesel are $6.97, $7.75, and $4.41 per litre. The last of sev­er­al fu­el price hikes un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment was in Sep­tem­ber 2022, for the 2023 Bud­get.

UNC of­fi­cials said it would be pos­si­ble to re­duce the gas prices at the pump, since the glob­al oil price is low and al­so Gov­ern­ment’s con­tri­bu­tion to the fu­el sub­sidy wouldn’t be as high as if the oil prices were high­er.

In 2021, past Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert high­light­ed pol­i­cy shifts to bring T&T in line with in­ter­na­tion­al prac­tice by al­low­ing mar­ket forces to de­ter­mine re­tail fu­el prices. This in­clud­ed that prices at the pump would move up or down in re­sponse to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket trends. Sub­se­quent­ly, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had said if the av­er­age oil price dropped, the price of gas at the pump would al­so drop. This was meant to pass on re­duc­tions in the price paid on im­ports of re­fined fu­els.

For ex­am­ple, if the oil price were US$85, Pre­mi­um gas in T&T would drop to $6.92 and Su­per to $6.66. Al­so, if the oil price were US$75, the price at the pump would be $5.68 (Pre­mi­um) and $5.43 (Su­per).

In 2023, the then UNC op­po­si­tion, not­ing the oil price had dropped be­low US$80 and there was no change to the price at the pumps, queried the non-im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­duced fu­el prices. Im­bert said then that gov­ern­ment hadn’t ad­just­ed the price at the pump due to fluc­tu­at­ing glob­al oil prices.

Among rev­enue-rais­ing meth­ods in the Bud­get, sources said cur­rent fines for some ar­eas will be raised.

Al­so ex­pect­ed are an­nounce­ments on re­struc­tured CEPEP and URP pro­grammes and sys­tems to help un­em­ployed work­ers.

The Bud­get is ex­pect­ed to im­ple­ment changes for is­sues which UNC Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters found and have com­plained about.

Over $60B ... deficit con­trol

Among Bud­get state­ments in re­cent weeks, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had promised an “ear­ly Oc­to­ber” bud­get, a very good Bud­get and one in which ex­pen­di­ture ex­ceed­ed rev­enue.

UNC sources said the Bud­get may be ap­prox­i­mate­ly $61/2B - high­er than the last Bud­get of the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. That was $59.741B.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pro­ject­ed a deficit but not as high as ex­pect­ed. She cit­ed the use of tools to fi­nance the deficit.

Sources said Gov­ern­ment had worked to re­duce the deficit for the 2026 pack­age and keep it low­er than the $5.517B of the PNM’s 2024/2025 Bud­get. That deficit was in­creased to $9B when the UNC Gov­ern­ment, in the mid-year re­view, added $3.1B in sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing to it. The UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­cused the PNM then of “un­der­bud­get­ing.”

Some UNC of­fi­cials pro­ject­ed the deficit for UNC’s 2026 Bud­get may be “less than $5B.”