Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

It’s (fi­nal­ly) of­fi­cial—the UNC Gov­ern­ment’s first Na­tion­al Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed next Mon­day at 1.30 pm.

The con­fir­ma­tion came af­ter a day of con­fu­sion and pre­ma­ture leaks that forced Gov­ern­ment to make an of­fi­cial state­ment.

The Fi­nance Min­istry is­sued a brief, three-line re­lease at 10.49 am yes­ter­day, signed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, stat­ing, “Please be ad­vised that the Na­tion­al Bud­get 2026 will be pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment by the Ho­n­ourable Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, MP, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, on Mon­day 13th Oc­to­ber 2025 at 1.30 pm.”

The an­nounce­ment ends un­cer­tain­ty that fol­lowed a com­mu­ni­ca­tion mis­step on Mon­day, when the Oc­to­ber 13 date was pre­ma­ture­ly leaked by UNC and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. The date was lat­er post­ed on the UNC’s of­fi­cial Face­book page just be­fore mid­night and sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed by Tan­coo him­self when he shared the UNC post on his What­sApp sta­tus ear­ly yes­ter­day.

This will be Tan­coo’s first bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion and the first fis­cal pack­age for the six-month-old UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

How­ev­er, ques­tions arose over the un­ortho­dox man­ner in which the bud­get date was re­vealed. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the date is an­nounced ei­ther in Par­lia­ment or through an of­fi­cial Fi­nance Min­istry re­lease.

Tan­coo did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s queries about why the an­nounce­ment was first made via po­lit­i­cal and per­son­al plat­forms in­stead of for­mal gov­ern­ment chan­nels.

When the date first sur­faced on Mon­day, UNC of­fi­cials in­sist­ed it was not yet of­fi­cial. Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er told CNC3 the con­fu­sion was the re­sult of “leaked in­for­ma­tion” and as­sured that an of­fi­cial state­ment would fol­low through gov­ern­ment chan­nels yes­ter­day.

Af­ter the date was for­mal­ly con­firmed, nei­ther Per­sad-Bisses­sar nor Tan­coo re­spond­ed to ques­tions about what the pub­lic might ex­pect from next Mon­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion.

Se­nior UNC sources said the up­com­ing Bud­get would de­liv­er on promis­es made dur­ing the par­ty’s cam­paign and ear­ly months in of­fice.

“It will be a very good Bud­get,” one source said. “It seeks to ad­dress resid­ual is­sues from pre­vi­ous terms while meet­ing our cur­rent com­mit­ments and set­ting the path and pace for our five-year term—and be­yond.”

While no de­tails of po­ten­tial “bud­get good­ies” were con­firmed, sources sug­gest­ed the mea­sures would be de­signed to “ac­com­mo­date the peo­ple” and stim­u­late con­fi­dence in the new Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal di­rec­tion.

Fol­low­ing Tan­coo’s pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is sched­uled to de­liv­er her bud­get re­ply on Fri­day, Oc­to­ber 17, at 10 am. De­bate will then con­tin­ue in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, fol­lowed by the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s ex­am­i­na­tion of the Bud­get, be­fore the Sen­ate de­bate brings the process to a close.

House to meet ahead of

Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion

Mean­while, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, which has been on re­cess, will re­sume sit­ting on Fri­day to com­plete de­bate on the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025, and to ad­dress two gov­ern­ment mo­tions.

On Mon­day, amid con­fu­sion over the leaked date, the Op­po­si­tion Leader had called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ex­plain the ap­par­ent mis­han­dling of the an­nounce­ment, warn­ing that de­lays in the Bud­get’s pas­sage could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences, in­clud­ing the po­ten­tial shut­down of pub­lic ser­vices.

Beck­les did not com­ment on the mat­ter yes­ter­day but is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress it dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence to­day.

Across var­i­ous sec­tors, there was a sense of re­lief yes­ter­day that the long-await­ed bud­get date had fi­nal­ly been con­firmed, clear­ing the way for the new ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fis­cal plans to be un­veiled next week.