Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A date for pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2025/2026 Bud­get is like­ly to be an­nounced this week - and it’s tipped to be an Oc­to­ber 6 date, ac­cord­ing to Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

The source yes­ter­day not­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said two weeks ago the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Bud­get will be giv­en in “ear­ly Oc­to­ber.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to re­turn from the US to­mor­row evening. Be­fore leav­ing T&T, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­port­ed­ly gave min­is­ters the first draft of the 2026 Bud­get’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, so they could ex­am­ine ar­eas they wish to pri­ori­tise or shift in their min­istries.

The cur­rent fis­cal year ends at month-end. The 2026 Bud­get has to be in place be­fore the end of Oc­to­ber.

Ac­cord­ing to pro­ce­dure, once the Bud­get is de­liv­ered in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (HOR), it is fol­lowed four days lat­er by the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s re­ply.

On this oc­ca­sion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo will be pre­sent­ing his first Bud­get in the HOR. Tan­coo was the UNC’s fi­nance and econ­o­my point man when the par­ty was in Op­po­si­tion be­fore. Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment leader Pen­ny Beck­les will al­so de­liv­er her first Bud­get re­ply.

Af­ter Beck­les, HOR de­bate of the Bud­get con­tin­ues with Gov­ern­ment speak­ers pre­sent­ing de­tails of plans for the 2026 fis­cal year in their re­spec­tive port­fo­lios, while Op­po­si­tion MPs will present their cri­tique of the pack­age.

Once de­bate in the HOR ends in five days, the Bud­get will be ex­am­ined by the HOR’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC), com­pris­ing Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion MPs. The Op­po­si­tion will ques­tion min­is­ters about each item in the Bud­get’s ac­com­pa­ny­ing doc­u­ments from Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture to the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan.

On com­ple­tion of SFC dis­cus­sions, the Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed and de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate for an­oth­er five days.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials es­ti­mat­ed that all pro­ce­dures should be com­plet­ed by month-end, once it is pre­sent­ed on Oc­to­ber 6.

They pro­ject­ed late-night de­bates, not­ing that when the UNC-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship was in Gov­ern­ment over 2010-2015, the first Bud­get de­bate in­clud­ed HOR sit­tings which end­ed at 4 am. Then, cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal was gov­ern­ment’s House leader.

“He’s high­ly ef­fi­cient. It’s al­most the same num­ber of MPs on ei­ther side as it was then,” they added.

The 2024-2025 Bud­get pre­sent­ed by ex-PNM Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was $59.741 bil­lion with a deficit of $5.517 bil­lion. Af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion which the PNM lost, the new UNC Gov­ern­ment sought sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing of $3.1b, stat­ing that the PNM had “un­der­bud­get­ed” for many things.

While the up­com­ing Bud­get is ex­pect­ed to be just over the 2025 Bud­get lev­el of $59.741b, in June, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) re­quest­ed $3.71B based on what it pro­ject­ed was a na­tion­al Bud­get of “$63.5b.”

THA Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance Petal-Ann Roberts, who in­di­cat­ed those amounts, stressed that the THA will not ac­cept any­thing less than 5.9 per cent of the Bud­get as its 2025/2026 al­lo­ca­tion

Last year, the THA re­quest­ed $3.9b and re­ceived $2.59b for the cur­rent fis­cal year. Roberts said the days of To­ba­go re­ceiv­ing “less than its fair share must end.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who re­cent­ly promised “a very good bud­get,” said the up­com­ing pack­age will have a deficit and may have big­ger ex­pen­di­ture than rev­enue.

She al­lud­ed to find­ing “cre­ative ways” to sup­ple­ment rev­enues and fi­nanc­ing deficits and that Gov­ern­ment would use avail­able tools to fi­nance the ex­pect­ed deficit. Not­ing the deficit for the last Bud­get, Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­ject­ed the up­com­ing one may not be as high as ex­pect­ed.

Last week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment had “many, many pro­pos­als” for the Bud­get which were “still be­ing fi­nalised.” She hint­ed at job cre­ation, in­no­v­a­tive projects to cre­ate more rev­enue streams be­yond oil/gas and sport tourism.

Sources said Bud­get con­tent would ad­dress pub­lic ser­vants’ set­tle­ments and oth­er cam­paign promis­es with­in a tight­ly con­fig­ured frame­work.

Pri­or­i­ty spend­ing is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue in se­cu­ri­ty, health, agri­cul­ture, and ed­u­ca­tion, with em­pha­sis al­so on sports, util­i­ties, works and so­cial de­vel­op­ment projects.

Stake­hold­ers from busi­ness and oth­er sec­tors, as well UNC mem­bers - such as ex-MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al- have sub­mit­ted rec­om­men­da­tions to Gov­ern­ment.

Yes­ter­day, for­mer min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry, Vas­ant Bharath, said the sin­gle most im­por­tant thing the Bud­get must have is a crime so­lu­tion plan, since lo­cal, for­eign in­vest­ment and dai­ly life de­pend on se­cu­ri­ty. He rec­om­mend­ed a law en­force­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ unit for the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Bharath said the bud­get should be a fis­cal sta­bil­i­sa­tion plan, with non-es­sen­tial projects frozen for six months, with re­sources redi­rect­ed to health, ed­u­ca­tion and tar­get­ed so­cial sup­port, while crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and pro­duc­tive cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture re­main pri­or­i­ties.

Bharath ad­vo­cat­ed debt man­age­ment strat­e­gy, more ef­fi­cient rev­enue col­lec­tion, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion for growth and pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of forex for food, med­i­cine, and ex­porters’ in­puts.