The fol­low­ing are 20 pro­posed mea­sures in the 2027 Bud­get pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

The 2026 fis­cal year was an aw­ful pe­ri­od for the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T). Con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions for new gas con­tracts led to the idling of the Nu­trien fa­cil­i­ties, which was fol­lowed by the idling of the Methanex Ti­tan fa­cil­i­ty. Re­cent­ly, Pro­man took the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to re­struc­ture its busi­ness to ad­dress the re­al­i­ty of the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply sit­u­a­tion. Over the last year, the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor shed more than 450 di­rect jobs and like­ly close to 450 in­di­rect jobs. This doesn’t in­clude any job loss from the Pro­man re­struc­tur­ing. The sit­u­a­tion al­so had a tremen­dous neg­a­tive im­pact on en­er­gy ser­vices con­trac­tors, as op­er­a­tors ad­just­ed their main­te­nance pro­grammes in re­sponse to their ex­is­ten­tial sit­u­a­tion.

A day af­ter he earned Trinidad and To­ba­go a sil­ver medal in the In­di­vid­ual Time Tri­al at the UCI Elite Caribbean Road Cham­pi­onships in San­to Domin­go, Ja­di­an Neaves added to his medal tal­ly by clinch­ing gold in the Men’s Un­der-23 di­vi­sion of the In­di­vid­ual Road Race Sun­day (Oc­to­ber 11).

For some, the mere thought of can­cer is enough to send them run­ning. They may ig­nore the warn­ing signs, brush aside their sus­pi­cions and hope it all dis­ap­pears. But for Claudette Stew­art, con­fronting the pos­si­bil­i­ty head-on, lis­ten­ing to her body and hold­ing fast to un­wa­ver­ing faith are the very ac­tions that car­ried her through her jour­ney.

I re­call re­peat­ing the old adage that “our peo­ple are our great­est as­set” on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) hus­tings when our par­ty and our Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment were peo­ple-cen­tred. At this mo­ment, as a reg­u­lar par­ty mem­ber and cit­i­zen, I con­tem­plate the con­straints on cur­rent mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment as oth­er cit­i­zens ap­proach me with their con­cerns.