Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh-Dat­too

Over the past decade, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al bud­gets have fluc­tu­at­ed with chang­ing oil and gas prices, rev­enue short­falls, and per­sis­tent fis­cal deficits. Against this back­drop, To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion from the na­tion­al bud­get has re­mained a steady point of fo­cus.

In 2015, To­ba­go re­ceived its largest al­lo­ca­tion in re­cent years — $3.7 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing 5.7 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get. This was well above the rec­om­mend­ed min­i­mum al­lo­ca­tion of 4.03 per cent, as set out by the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion in 2000. How­ev­er, be­gin­ning in 2016, To­ba­go’s share de­clined and has since av­er­aged be­tween 4.3 and 4.5 per cent an­nu­al­ly.

By 2025, To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion stands at $2.6 bil­lion, or 4.35 per cent of the $59.7 bil­lion na­tion­al bud­get. While this rep­re­sents a mod­est in­crease in dol­lar terms com­pared with the $2.2 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in 2018, it is sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er as a per­cent­age of the to­tal bud­get than in 2015.

Most of To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion con­tin­ues to be di­rect­ed to­wards re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, cov­er­ing salaries, health­care, and day-to-day ser­vices. Small­er por­tions are ear­marked for de­vel­op­ment projects, av­er­ag­ing just a few hun­dred mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, while pro­grammes such as URP and CEPEP ac­count for less than one per cent of the is­land’s year­ly al­lo­ca­tion.

To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion, record­ed at just over 60,000 in the Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus of 2011, makes up rough­ly four per cent of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion of 1.51 mil­lion in 2025. In re­cent years, To­ba­go’s bud­get share has close­ly re­flect­ed this pro­por­tion, re­main­ing near 4.3 per cent of the na­tion­al to­tal.

While the Gov­ern­ment has faced sig­nif­i­cant fis­cal pres­sures—in­clud­ing deficits that peaked at over $9 bil­lion in 2022—To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion has not fall­en be­low 4.3 per cent in the last nine years. How­ev­er, it has not re­turned to the high­er lev­el of al­most six per cent record­ed in 2015.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to nav­i­gate the ups and downs of an en­er­gy-de­pen­dent econ­o­my, To­ba­go re­mains steady at just over four per cent of to­tal gov­ern­ment spend­ing. The ques­tion that lingers is whether that share is tru­ly enough to fu­el the is­land’s am­bi­tions for growth.

That an­swer may come in the days ahead, when Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo presents his first na­tion­al bud­get next Mon­day.