In her New Year’s mes­sage to the na­tion yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had is­sued a clear man­date to every Cab­i­net Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment agency that 2026 must be a year of eco­nom­ic re­build­ing, re­cov­ery and de­liv­ery.

“Our fo­cus in 2026 will be on stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic growth, sup­port­ing small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, ac­cel­er­at­ing pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture projects, strength­en­ing both the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors, ex­pand­ing job op­por­tu­ni­ties and en­sur­ing that pub­lic spend­ing trans­lates in­to tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits for cit­i­zens,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. 

Ear­li­er last month, at a fund-rais­ing Christ­mas din­ner of the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, she told par­ty mem­bers, MPs and sen­a­tors that the par­ty has a great deal of work to do this year.

“Brace your back,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s em­pha­sis on the need for eco­nom­ic re­build­ing and the stim­u­la­tion of growth in the econ­o­my points to the crit­i­cal need to gen­er­ate enough rev­enue to en­sure that the deficit be­tween what the Gov­ern­ment earns and what it spends this cal­en­dar year does not bal­loon to an un­man­age­able lev­el.

From its ac­tions, more so than its words, the Gov­ern­ment has demon­strat­ed it is aware of the fis­cal chal­lenges and re­al­i­ties faced by the coun­try.

The de­ci­sion by the ad­min­is­tra­tion not to dis­burse all of the back­pay owed to cer­tain mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) last month — as a re­sult of the set­tle­ment of the 10 per cent wage in­crease for civ­il ser­vants—is one in­di­ca­tion the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands the eco­nom­ic is­sues. The Gov­ern­ment has al­so made it clear that some of the back­pay bal­ance will be in non-cash pay­ments.

Even giv­en the fi­nan­cial con­straints the coun­try faces, the Gov­ern­ment needs to pro­vide the PSA mem­bers—as well as oth­er work­ers whose trade unions set­tled col­lec­tive agree­ments with the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion—with a clear sched­ule of pay­ments of both their con­tract­ed salary in­creas­es and their back­pay. This will al­low thou­sands of work­ers across the coun­try to bet­ter plan their fu­ture.

The Gov­ern­ment’s stead­fast­ness in push­ing through the in­creased Cus­toms and traf­fic fees—which were sig­nalled in the 2026 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion—is a third in­di­ca­tion that rev­enue gen­er­a­tion is like­ly to be an is­sue in 2026.

While her New Year’s mes­sage in­di­cates a clear un­der­stand­ing of the eco­nom­ic is­sues, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mes­sage may not have gone far enough in out­lin­ing to the pop­u­la­tion that 2026 is like­ly to be a year in which they may be re­quired to curb their ex­pec­ta­tions.

While there are promis­ing signs that the pro­duc­ers of nat­ur­al gas are re­port­ing an uptick in pro­duc­tion of the com­mod­i­ty, there are al­so wor­ry­ing signs all is not well with the ma­jor users of nat­ur­al gas at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

For­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy Stu­art Young, this week point­ed out that many of the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tracts the petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies on the es­tate de­pend on came to an end yes­ter­day.

If Mr Young is right, this is clear­ly an area that needs con­sid­er­able fo­cus ear­ly this year.

And if the re­ports that a ma­jor Point Lisas play­er in­tends to cease its op­er­a­tions for­mal­ly to­day are ac­cu­rate, that may lead to re­duced in­flow of for­eign ex­change rev­enue to the coun­try.

The is­sue of for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion is one that the ad­min­is­tra­tion promised to fix, both dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign and af­ter April 28. That is an­oth­er is­sue that re­quires the ur­gent at­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment.

De­spite the chal­lenges, we wish all read­ers health and pros­per­i­ty in the New Year.