The Fi­nance Bill 2025, just passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, makes law­ful all the rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing mea­sures an­nounced in the 2026 Bud­get.

The 2026 Bud­get an­tic­i­pates TT$55.367 bil­lion in rev­enue. Will an oil price of $73.25 and a gas price of $4.25 used in the Bud­get to cal­cu­late rev­enue prove to be too high? Win­ter de­mand sug­gests that nat­ur­al gas might get over the $4.50 range. Oil, on the oth­er hand, has been hov­er­ing in the 60-dol­lar range. Any­thing less than the TT$11.254b pro­ject­ed will be a dis­ap­point­ment.

Non-en­er­gy rev­enue and com­pli­ance are pro­ject­ed as de­liv­er­ing $43.402b. in rev­enue (78% of rev­enue). This is a ma­jor de­mand. Can this be de­liv­ered? Growth from man­u­fac­tur­ing, trans­port and trade, for in­stance, is re­quired to pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of that, through tax­es. If eco­nom­ic mo­men­tum is weak and lim­its growth, tax­es an­tic­i­pat­ed in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor will be dif­fi­cult to re­alise.

Some things that are re­quired to be done al­so re­quire ded­i­cat­ed ef­fort. The first is get­ting a sub­stan­tial num­ber of busi­ness­es that do not now pay tax­es to reg­is­ter with In­land Rev­enue to pay tax­es. A puni­tive ap­proach will be self-de­feat­ing. So, ways and means have to be de­vised to in­crease the catch­ment pool and to boost rev­enue in a man­ner that is con­sid­ered fair and un­in­tru­sive. Struc­tur­ing, mod­ernising and train­ing In­land Rev­enue of­fi­cers, and im­prov­ing per­for­mance at cus­toms and ex­cise, go hand in hand with ex­pand­ing the tax net and im­prov­ing tax col­lec­tion ef­fi­cien­cy. Since tax leak­age and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy will be ma­jor de­ter­mi­nants of whether non-en­er­gy tax rev­enues are re­alised, the suc­cess of these ini­tia­tives to widen the tax net and to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness re­quires the ut­most care and at­ten­tion.

On the en­er­gy side, im­ple­ment­ing trans­fer pric­ing leg­is­la­tion re­mains the key rev­enue is­sue.

Some com­men­ta­tors, while gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive, have flagged im­por­tant is­sues of con­cern. The is­sue of ex­pen­di­ture con­trol and the need for ef­fi­cien­cy im­prove­ments were flagged by Ronald Ramkissoon. In oth­er words, rev­enue mea­sures not on­ly have to de­liv­er but have to be sup­port­ed by ex­pen­di­ture cuts and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty boosts. In­dera Sajee­wan cau­tioned that the elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge to busi­ness and land­lord rent tax could/would im­pact on the con­sumer by rais­ing the cost of liv­ing.

These econ­o­mists are not hos­tile to the Gov­ern­ment. They are aware that both ac­tion and in­ac­tion over the last ten years have ex­ac­er­bat­ed our fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic con­di­tion, and they ap­pre­ci­ate that the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion is walk­ing a tight rope at this time. But... they al­so know that, what­ev­er the chal­lenges, a coun­try has to be man­aged and con­sci­en­tious­ly gov­erned.

The Op­po­si­tion, who gov­erned for five years from 2015 caus­ing a lot of un­hap­pi­ness, but who were giv­en a sec­ond chance nar­row­ly in 2020, and con­tin­ued to gov­ern bad­ly and cal­lous­ly, did not sup­port the 2026 bud­get, nor the Fi­nance bill. As frag­ment­ed and con­tra­dic­to­ry as they are with­in, they are, how­ev­er, unit­ed in pur­pose on want­i­ng this Gov­ern­ment to fail. They know that ex­pen­di­ture will be more than stat­ed in the Bud­get. They are hop­ing that the rev­enue tar­gets will not be re­alised, that the econ­o­my will stag­nate and that pres­sure will build up on the cit­i­zen. It is just part of the malev­o­lence that pass­es for pol­i­tics in this coun­try and maybe, every­where.

The mid-year re­view will be a po­lit­i­cal­ly charged and di­vi­sive de­bate when the Gov­ern­ment comes to add ex­pen­di­ture for the 10% in­crease to pub­lic ser­vants’ yields, a high­er deficit and in­crease our coun­try’s loan port­fo­lio and to make ad­just­ments to the bud­get. The Gov­ern­ment must bear in mind, though, that be­sides man­ag­ing the fis­cal re­quire­ments of a bud­get, they must al­so man­age re­cov­ery and growth; they must al­so man­age the eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial im­pact on cit­i­zens ie cost of liv­ing and in­fla­tion (two dif­fer­ent things); they must man­age de­vel­op­ment, and they must de­sign and ac­tu­alise a more de­sir­able fu­ture for the coun­try. Sur­vival is one thing, thriv­ing and get­ting to sus­tain­abil­i­ty is quite an­oth­er. And this holds true even if you ful­fil elec­tion promis­es. One is pol­i­tics, the oth­er is gov­er­nance.

The con­tin­u­ing forex de­ple­tion, the im­bal­ance of im­ports and ex­ports with a TT dol­lar price that in­cen­tivis­es im­ports and makes ex­ports un­com­pet­i­tive, in­creas­ing debt and debt re­pay­ment re­quire­ments, low non-en­er­gy in­vest­ments, lim­it­ed sources of forex in­flows, and an ex­ces­sive re­cur­rent state sec­tor cost sup­port­ing high lev­els of sub­sidi­s­a­tion, in­ef­fi­cien­cy, and sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of wastage and cor­rup­tion, de­mand de­ci­sive and trans­for­ma­tion­al in­ter­ven­tions that can be ra­tio­nal­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the pop­u­la­tion.