Two events took place last week that were im­por­tant to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture. The first was the 2026 Bud­get speech, and the sec­ond was the con­tin­ued mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion by the Unit­ed States to­wards Venezuela. Link­ing these events is do­mes­tic and for­eign pol­i­cy and our abil­i­ty to ac­cess Venezuela’s nat­ur­al gas fields.

The rel­a­tive­ly new Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion ben­e­fit­ed from five months in of­fice to iden­ti­fy the chal­lenges in their min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios and de­fine the pro­posed so­lu­tions. Pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tions were that they would have brought new in­sights to the coun­try’s struc­tur­al chal­lenges, tem­pered by the re­al­i­sa­tion that pos­i­tive change would take time. There was ap­pre­hen­sion that there would be high­er tax­es and the hope that the promised pub­lic sec­tor wage in­creas­es would be kept.

Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo ad­dressed the re­tire­ment age con­tro­ver­sy and the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance fund cred­i­bly. Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions would be in­creased im­me­di­ate­ly, and the re­tire­ment age of 65 years would be phased in over 10 years. While this de­ci­sion is 20 years late, it ex­tends the life of the fund and in­creas­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it will op­er­ate sus­tain­ably. Oth­er mea­sures will be need­ed. The 12th in­de­pen­dent ac­tu­ar­i­al re­view is cur­rent­ly in process, and the re­port and its rec­om­men­da­tions will be re­leased in 2026.

Min­is­ter Tan­coo al­so an­nounced a new round of ne­go­ti­a­tions with pub­lic sec­tor unions on the promised 10 per cent salary in­crease. There were a few fis­cal mea­sures. In keep­ing with the ap­proach of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­come and cor­po­ra­tion tax rates will be grad­u­at­ed, with the most prof­itable com­pa­nies or those with the high­est in­comes pay­ing the high­est rates. Sev­er­al thou­sand items were made non-vat­able, while ex­cise du­ties and port fees were in­creased. Un­doubt­ed­ly, the fi­nance min­is­ter cal­cu­lat­ed, hope­ful­ly, that the net im­pact of these changes would be ze­ro.

Less clear was the medi­um-term strat­e­gy to ad­dress the struc­tur­al is­sues. Con­tin­ued de­pen­dence on the growth in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion re­mained cen­tral to es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue. There were sev­er­al mea­sures aimed at strength­en­ing In­land Rev­enue and Cus­toms and Ex­cise to im­prove rev­enue col­lec­tion. The plan to broad­en the pub­lic ser­vice mod­erni­sa­tion ef­fort with dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion at its core was reem­pha­sised. Many ini­tia­tives are al­ready in progress. With 55 months left in this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s term, it will be judged on the suc­cess of its im­ple­men­ta­tion ef­forts rel­a­tive to its pre­de­ces­sors.

The deep­en­ing US bel­liger­ence to­ward Venezuela was ev­i­denced by the con­tin­u­ing de­struc­tion of fish­ing boats and what amounts to ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings. The dif­fer­ence is that this time, T&T na­tion­als were among the dead. Giv­en the so­phis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment and sur­veil­lance tech­niques avail­able to the US, it is sur­pris­ing that no ev­i­dence con­firm­ing that these fish­ing ves­sels were car­ry­ing drugs has been pre­sent­ed to date.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump al­so an­nounced the ex­is­tence of lethal covert CIA op­er­a­tions in Venezuela. This an­nounce­ment, to­geth­er with the ad­vanced weapon­ry de­ployed in Caribbean wa­ters, makes it abun­dant­ly clear that the US ef­fort is about regime change, not a war on drug traf­fick­ing.

No one can pre­dict the fu­ture, and de­ci­sions are made based on avail­able in­for­ma­tion. The bud­get was mut­ed about ac­cess to the Drag­on Gas Field and the ef­fect of the six-month OFAC li­cence. Why would Venezuela agree to new terms? Eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors will soon sug­gest whether the bud­get will in­duce new in­vest­ment and growth. Sim­i­lar­ly, what will be the im­pact of height­ened US ag­gres­sion on T&T's for­eign pol­i­cy di­rec­tion and ad­di­tion­al ma­rine ex­plo­ration?