Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

The Gov­ern­ment is keep­ing the date and de­tails of the 2026/2027 Bud­get firm­ly un­der wraps, with both Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo de­clin­ing to shed any light on when the fis­cal pack­age will be pre­sent­ed or what it will con­tain.

The Prime Min­is­ter has re­fused to ac­knowl­edge any at­tempt from Guardian Me­dia to re­veal the bud­get date. But when asked di­rect­ly yes­ter­day for the date and the fo­cus of the up­com­ing bud­get, Tan­coo’s re­sponse was suc­cinct and to the point: “no com­ment”.

For his first time in the hot seat af­ter tak­ing of­fice last year, Min­is­ter Tan­coo read the bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13, 2025.

How­ev­er, a se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial said at this point the bud­get date and its con­tents are the sole purview of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

While stake­hold­ers were un­able, or un­will­ing, to spec­u­late on a date, they were very clear on what they need to see to be sat­is­fied with the fis­cal pack­age.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is call­ing for “a mea­sured ap­proach fo­cused on long-term sta­bil­i­ty.”

Specif­i­cal­ly, it ex­pects that Min­is­ter Tan­coo will present a pru­dent pack­age with con­trolled pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture.

Re­spond­ing via a state­ment, Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj laid out a wish list that cen­tres on eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and a com­mit­ment to mak­ing it eas­i­er to con­duct busi­ness.

“To build true re­silience, the bud­get must dis­cuss progress in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, such as man­u­fac­tur­ing, ser­vices and tech­nol­o­gy, while telling us of the im­prove­ments in the ease of do­ing busi­ness. Im­prov­ing port op­er­a­tions, digi­tis­ing pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, and cut­ting un­nec­es­sary red tape are es­sen­tial steps that di­rect­ly ben­e­fit busi­ness­es and the av­er­age cit­i­zen,” Ma­haraj said.

The Cham­ber’s out­look is al­so de­cid­ed­ly op­ti­mistic but hedged with calls for con­ser­v­a­tive man­age­ment.

“Look­ing ahead, the medi­um-term out­look of­fers some promise. With nat­ur­al gas projects ex­pect­ed to boost pro­duc­tion by mid-2027 and key dis­cus­sions un­der­way, rev­enues and FX (for­eign ex­change) are ex­pect­ed to im­prove for fis­cal 2027/2028. The im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty must be bridg­ing this tran­si­tion pe­ri­od with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, en­sur­ing lo­cal busi­ness­es re­main sup­port­ed and ready to cap­i­talise on the com­ing eco­nom­ic re­bound.”

Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber Ki­ran Singh was quick to make clear that he had no in­for­ma­tion on the pos­si­ble bud­get date, but he was just as quick to say what he wants: an ear­ly bud­get and for the Gov­ern­ment to restart the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery.

Singh said his stake­hold­ers want the bud­get called “as ear­ly as pos­si­ble” so that they could plan for Christ­mas. Most of his mem­bers are re­tail busi­ness­es and the Christ­mas sea­son is an im­por­tant time for them, so they would wel­come the ad­vance no­tice.

“Be­cause we could then cater for any un­fore­seen changes in the ex­pen­di­ture side of the bud­get,” Singh said. “The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty would like to have enough no­tice to re­tool their fi­nan­cial strate­gies to cater for any un­fore­seen ex­pens­es.”

On the tourism side of things, To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald Mac Lean said his bud­get sweet­en­er would be one bil­lion dol­lars for To­ba­go tourism.

Mac Lean said To­ba­go is cur­rent­ly not get­ting the vis­i­tor num­bers it needs to sus­tain its tourism in­dus­try; fur­ther­more, any ef­fort to in­crease vis­i­tor ar­rivals makes lit­tle to no sense if there are no places to house or en­ter­tain those vis­i­tors when they do ar­rive.

“You are not go­ing to get the flights com­ing in­to the is­land if you don’t have prop­er large ho­tels, and we don’t have be­cause they need re­fur­bish­ment,” Mac Lean said.

The is­land’s six big ho­tels are: Co­co Reef Re­sort, Grafton Beach Re­sort, Le Grand Cour­land Spa Re­sort, Mag­dale­na Grand, Mount Irv­ing Bay Re­sort and Starfish To­ba­go Re­sort, and he said all need ma­jor re­fur­bish­ment.

Mac Lean al­so said that many of the restau­rants that closed dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down nev­er re­opened, and the is­land’s in­fra­struc­ture needs up­dat­ing: roads, wa­ter sup­ply. Mac Lean said these is­sues must be ad­dressed to get tourism go­ing again.

Last year, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter had to de­ny shar­ing the bud­get date be­fore time. On Oc­to­ber 6, a so­cial me­dia post shared the Oc­to­ber 13 date, but when asked to con­firm it as the bud­get date, Min­is­ter Tan­coo told Guardian Me­dia that he hadn’t made an an­nounce­ment.