Dr Bhoe Tewarie

As soon as the Prime Min­is­ter land­ed af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tions en­gage­ment and the meet­ing with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, the ques­tions came hot, thick and fast be­cause there is a strong per­cep­tion that T&T is caught in the mid­dle be­tween the US and Venezuela. The dis­po­si­tions of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his Venezue­lan coun­ter­part Nico­las Maduro spell trou­ble. T&T’s need for OFAC li­cences from the US Trea­sury on the one hand, and bind­ing work­able con­tracts to source and pipe nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela to Trinidad on the oth­er, is a del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act. Strong words have al­so been ex­changed across the Gulf of Paria.

Chevron, a US cor­po­ra­tion, with­in days of re­cov­er­ing their OFAC li­cence—which was can­celled around the same time as the li­cences to T&T were al­so with­drawn—has since been pump­ing oil from Venezuela and ex­port­ing to the Unit­ed States. It is the re­in­state­ment of Chevron s li­cence that made the open­ing pos­si­ble for T&T. But let us take the win and move on.

As spec­u­la­tion on the Bud­get date and like­ly bud­get con­tent be­gan to sur­face, a date was leaked and af­ter a lit­tle fuss Oc­to­ber 13 was con­firmed.

But two Sun­days be­fore the Bud­get, the Prime Min­is­ter caused a stir by adding and sub­tract­ing from Cab­i­net port­fo­lios and re­align­ing min­istries. Be­fore the dust could set­tle, a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter was for­mal­ly charged, on the di­rec­tion of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice dur­ing his tenure as an Op­po­si­tion MP—a charge dis­missed months ear­li­er in a mag­is­trate’s court.

All of the above in a ten-day pe­ri­od is a lot for cit­i­zens to process and make sense of. And de­spite the calm­ness of our Prime Min­is­ter, and mod­est con­tain­ment of mur­ders by her Gov­ern­ment and dra­mat­ic in­ter­ven­tion in row­dy schools, there re­mains a sense of volatil­i­ty that un­set­tles.

The ac­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter on min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios, which she has in­formed the pop­u­la­tion is for the pur­pose of align­ing min­istries to ex­e­cute projects and to de­liv­er re­sults more ef­fec­tive­ly to them, on­ly serves to un­der­score the im­por­tance of this par­tic­u­lar bud­get. It is the first bud­get of her sec­ond ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Prime Min­is­ter has an­nounced her in­ten­tion to lead the change that she and her par­ty promised. So, her first for­mi­da­ble sig­nal of eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy will be this 2026 Bud­get.

How this bud­get is ap­proached will re­veal con­cep­tu­al grasp and philo­soph­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion. It will clar­i­fy how op­tions are iden­ti­fied and choic­es made and per­haps the ra­tio­nale might be shared. If such things are done, it will point di­rec­tion for our coun­try and set the tone for eco­nom­ic pref­er­ences of the sec­ond Per­sad-Bisses­sar regime.

But the test will be in how the ten­sions be­tween cam­paign promis­es, man­i­festo pledges, and a vi­sion of a de­sir­able fu­ture des­ti­na­tion will be re­solved, giv­en the fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic lim­i­ta­tions and the struc­tur­al con­straints.

In nit­ty grit­ty terms, the res­o­lu­tion of these chal­lenges must man­i­fest in a plan of pri­or­i­ties which has to be paid for. And the ob­jec­tives of the plan have to be achieved, that is, the re­sults have to show through ex­e­cu­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties and im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies that can be built up­on in the next bud­get, fis­cal 2027.

The most re­al­is­tic ap­proach might be to plan as if no ad­di­tion­al en­er­gy rev­enues will be com­ing in 2027 and 2028 and to pre­pare a 2026 bud­get that is part of a mul­ti-year plan, sup­port­ed by a fis­cal strat­e­gy which takes in­to ac­count that rev­enue short­falls from en­er­gy have to be res­cued by new rev­enue sources. The grant from Chi­na counts. But will there be tax­es and tar­get­ed tar­iffs and pri­vate in­vest­ment in pub­lic goods? The State is al­ready too large and too in­debt­ed, and does not have the rev­enue, sav­ings nor in­vest­ment funds.

T&T must al­so be­gin to ad­dress the lev­el of ex­pen­di­ture. The struc­tur­al prob­lem with ex­pen­di­ture is the pat­tern—90.5 per cent ded­i­cat­ed to re­cur­rent, 9.5 per cent to de­vel­op­ment. In re­cur­rent, 56 per cent goes to sub­si­dies and trans­fers (fis­cal 2025 fig­ures). With this ra­tio of pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture, it is im­pos­si­ble for Gov­ern­men­tal ac­tion to grow this econ­o­my on its own. And ad­di­tion­al pub­lic sec­tor jobs mean ad­di­tion­al tax­pay­er cost and in­creased gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture and prob­a­bly ad­di­tion­al debt. We need pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment, both lo­cal and for­eign, and pri­vate sec­tor jobs in a labour mar­ket in which par­tic­i­pa­tion is ex­treme­ly low at 54.4 per cent (Cen­tral Bank 2025).

What­ev­er Gov­ern­ment does the Op­po­si­tion will scream, ig­nor­ing that they mis­man­aged our coun­try to its present state of cri­sis for 10 years.

So, the Prime Min­is­ter would do well to make the best choic­es to give our coun­try hope for steady progress to a vi­able fu­ture. Her Gov­ern­ment’s first bud­get, how­ev­er, must be done with calm, con­fi­dence and ac­tive­ly earn trust.