The Cen­tral Bank of T&T has main­tained its re­po rate at 3.50 per cent, con­tin­u­ing a cy­cle of sta­bil­i­ty that it first in­tro­duced in March 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In its quar­ter­ly an­nounce­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Cen­tral Bank’s Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee (MPC) not­ed that while da­ta from the Min­istry of En­er­gy in­di­cat­ed that crude oil pro­duc­tion rose by 3.1 per cent dur­ing Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 2025, nat­ur­al gas out­put de­clined by 8.6 per cent in that pe­ri­od.

“Fur­ther down­stream, mar­gin­al­ly high­er pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (0.9 per cent) was off­set by low­er out­put for am­mo­nia (-3.4 per cent) and methanol (-9.5 per cent). Mean­while, the slow­down in non-en­er­gy sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ty is es­ti­mat­ed to have per­sist­ed dur­ing the fourth quar­ter of 2025,” the Cen­tral Bank said, point­ing out that in­di­ca­tors mon­i­tored by the Cen­tral Bank sug­gest soft­er per­for­mances for the whole­sale and re­tail trade, con­struc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors.

The re­lease from the bank not­ed that do­mes­tic fi­nan­cial con­di­tions are favourable de­spite pock­ets of tight­ness, adding that sys­tem liq­uid­i­ty re­mains am­ple, notwith­stand­ing a dip in ear­ly 2026.

“Af­ter de­clin­ing to $3.8 bil­lion in Jan­u­ary 2026, com­mer­cial banks’ ex­cess re­serves at the Cen­tral Bank av­er­aged $5.7 bil­lion by mid-March 2026. In­ter­bank mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ty per­sists but not at the lev­els ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing the fourth quar­ter of 2025, while no ‘re­po’ trans­ac­tions were record­ed since Feb­ru­ary 2026.

“How­ev­er, pri­vate sec­tor cred­it growth has con­tin­ued to slow. Pri­vate sec­tor cred­it ex­pan­sion slowed to 5.4 per cent (year-on-year) in Jan­u­ary 2026, down from growth of 6.3 per cent in Oc­to­ber 2025,” the bank stat­ed.

It added the slow­down was pri­mar­i­ly in­flu­enced by more mod­est busi­ness cred­it growth (5.7 per cent in Jan­u­ary com­pared with 6.6 per cent in Oc­to­ber 2025), adding that con­sumer lend­ing growth al­so slowed to 5.9 per cent from 8.0 per cent over the same pe­ri­od, dri­ven by low­er loan de­mand for mo­tor ve­hi­cles, debt con­sol­i­da­tion and re­fi­nanc­ing. Re­al es­tate mort­gage loans in­creased by 5.2 per cent.

The Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee (MPC) not­ed that glob­al eco­nom­ic con­di­tions were marked by sig­nif­i­cant un­cer­tain­ty stat­ing that in this set­ting, build­ing re­silience to safe­guard the do­mes­tic econ­o­my against ex­ter­nal shocks is para­mount.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign re­serves re­main some­what sta­ble, hov­er­ing around US$5.4 bil­lion since De­cem­ber 2025. How­ev­er, a few con­ven­tion­al in­ter­na­tion­al in­di­ca­tors of re­serve ad­e­qua­cy, such as the ra­tio of re­serves to ex­ter­nal debt, have slipped sug­gest­ing that fur­ther ac­cu­mu­la­tion of for­eign re­serves and/or a re­duc­tion of ex­ter­nal fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments may be re­quired to mit­i­gate ex­ter­nal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties,” the bank said.

“Up­on con­sid­er­a­tion of the un­cer­tain glob­al eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, on­go­ing soft­ness in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, slow­er cred­it growth, sta­ble for­eign re­serves and well-con­tained in­fla­tion, the MPC agreed to main­tain the re­po rate at 3.50 per cent,” the Bank ex­plained.

The MPC said it would ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor glob­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments in the con­text of the on­go­ing war in the Mid­dle East, par­tic­u­lar­ly the po­ten­tial for ad­verse spillover ef­fects for do­mes­tic in­fla­tion and eco­nom­ic growth.

It added it is al­so pre­pared to take the nec­es­sary mon­e­tary pol­i­cy ac­tions to main­tain a pru­dent bal­ance be­tween safe­guard­ing for­eign re­serves and fos­ter­ing favourable fund­ing con­di­tions sup­port­ive of do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The next Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy An­nounce­ment is sched­uled for June 26, 2026.