De­ci­sions on col­lec­tion, bor­row­ing, spend­ing, pro­vi­sion­ing and pro­jec­tion for the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the econ­o­my, will be the most ur­gent calls for Gov­ern­ment in Mon­day’s 2026 Bud­get.

Not unique to this fis­cal year are the re­al­i­ties of an econ­o­my which has been in de­cline for 20-plus years, with the fall in en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and the prices for the com­modi­ties on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. Even with news yes­ter­day of the grant­i­ng by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment of an­oth­er OFAC li­cence to T&T for the Drag­on Gas project, per­suad­ing the own­ers of the gas, Venezuela, to en­ter in­to a part­ner­ship has bridges to cross.

More­over, even if an agree­ment is reached with Venezuela, the ex­pect­ed re­turns are years away and will not help the bud­get­ing process this year.

The mes­sage, there­fore, is that the Gov­ern­ment, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dave Tan­coo, will have to do the prover­bial bor­row and beg out­side of the ex­ist­ing fis­cal re­sources to meet the fi­nan­cial needs of the econ­o­my.

Bor­row­ing, how­ev­er, will present the chal­lenge of in­creas­ing the debt-to-gross do­mes­tic prod­uct ra­tio, which is climb­ing dan­ger­ous­ly to 70 per cent, and the ob­vi­ous in­crease in ser­vic­ing the debt. The re­al­i­ty of it all is that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not bor­row its way out of its present fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, more so if the bor­rowed dol­lars are go­ing to meet re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance al­so is the fact that the Gov­ern­ment came to pow­er with a promise of elim­i­nat­ing two ma­jor sources of pro­ject­ed in­creased rev­enue. At the same time, it made bind­ing promis­es of ne­go­ti­at­ing salary in­creas­es start­ing at 10 per cent in the pub­lic ser­vice and the ex­pan­sion of so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes.

A raid on the sav­ings of the econ­o­my, ie, a draw­down on the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund and on the re­serves of gov­ern­ment agen­cies such as the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to meet fis­cal ex­pen­di­ture, just means util­is­ing rev­enue to stand in the same place, while ef­fec­tive­ly push­ing re­cov­ery in­to the long fu­ture.

What is left of rev­enue pro­ject­ed and col­lect­ed will not go very far.

This news­pa­per has, in ed­i­to­r­i­al com­ment and through in­ter­views with econ­o­mists, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, trade union lead­ers and news­pa­per colum­nists, not­ed that ex­pan­sion out­side of the non-en­er­gy ex­port sec­tor is re­al­ly the ma­jor hope for the fu­ture. But even if that course is em­barked up­on in a se­ri­ous and sus­tain­able man­ner, ma­jor re­turns can­not be ex­pect­ed to be reaped in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture.

Be­yond the econ­o­my, so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes, rel­e­vant and em­ploy­able an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives are vi­tal as they are re­lat­ed to the whole.

Gov­ern­ment is not in an en­vi­able po­si­tion and with it, the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to be out on a limb. While there are no im­me­di­ate and easy so­lu­tions, the con­tents of the Bud­get, be­yond the ex­pect­ed blame-gam­ing and pi­cong, must show tan­gi­ble ev­i­dence of pos­si­bil­i­ties for re­cov­ery.