KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment is not rul­ing out with­draw­ing from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) if rev­enue falls short of its $55.36 bil­lion pro­jec­tion for 2026.

The Op­po­si­tion has ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s use of US$73.25 per bar­rel as its bench­mark oil price for the 2026 Bud­get, but Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the fis­cal plan al­ready ac­counts for fluc­tu­a­tions in glob­al prices.

Speak­ing to re­porters at C3 Cen­tre, Ste Madeleine yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said Gov­ern­ment has sev­er­al fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms avail­able and would op­er­ate with­in its fis­cal con­straints. If a with­draw­al from the HSF be­comes nec­es­sary, it will be done with­in the law, he added, re­mind­ing jour­nal­ists that the Fund was cre­at­ed to pro­vide bud­getary sup­port when need­ed.

Tan­coo said the Min­istry mod­elled mul­ti­ple sce­nar­ios, not on­ly around oil and gas prices but al­so the fis­cal im­pli­ca­tions of any price de­cline.

“There are var­i­ous sce­nar­ios that have been played out, in­clud­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the price of oil drops. Sce­nario plan­ning oc­curred, so we are prepar­ing for those even­tu­al­i­ties if they hap­pen.”

The Gov­ern­ment based its as­sump­tions on an oil price of US$73.25 per bar­rel—com­pared to US$77.80 in 2025—and a nat­ur­al gas price of US$4.25 per MMB­tu, up from US$3.59 per MMB­tu.

At the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s an­nu­al post-bud­get meet­ing, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s Nali­nee Ramkissoon de­scribed the oil price as­sump­tion as “a bit op­ti­mistic” and asked how it was de­ter­mined.

Tan­coo ex­plained that over the past five to six years, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries has de­vel­oped a “bas­ket of oil prices,” pro­vid­ing op­ti­mistic, pes­simistic, and bal­anced pro­jec­tions. The Gov­ern­ment used the bal­anced fig­ure, he said.

He added that the bench­mark was not tied to Brent Crude but was de­rived us­ing a mech­a­nism de­vel­oped by the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, which av­er­ages the bas­ket’s prices.

To fund its ex­pen­di­ture, the Gov­ern­ment has in­tro­duced new tax­es and fines. When asked which in­dus­tries are ex­pect­ed to stim­u­late growth in 2026, Tan­coo said the bud­get aims to dri­ve “com­bined growth” across all sec­tors.

“If we get through with what we are try­ing to, then every sin­gle sec­tor of this econ­o­my will see growth. The in­cen­tives we are propos­ing are not just for one in­dus­try; they are all in­ter­linked. If the agri­cul­ture sec­tor grows, man­u­fac­tur­ing be­comes an op­por­tu­ni­ty. Trade and com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty al­so ex­pand, so every in­dus­try right now is tied to the oth­er,” he said.

He point­ed to the ex­ist­ing tax struc­ture as one of the main rev­enue sources but said it has suf­fered from poor im­ple­men­ta­tion. The Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR), he re­vealed, op­er­ates with on­ly 30 per cent of its re­quired tax com­pli­ance staff.

“Ad­dress­ing those is­sues and work­ing un­der the ex­ist­ing struc­ture will help bring in more rev­enue. Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus is on fix­ing tax com­pli­ance to en­sure T&T gets a fair share of what is be­ing pro­duced. This will even ad­dress an es­ti­mat­ed $10 bil­lion tax gap that for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert iden­ti­fied him­self and did noth­ing about,” he said.

“That $10 bil­lion clos­es. I pre­dict­ed a $3.8 bil­lion fis­cal deficit. If we can close that gap—even with­out the ben­e­fits of in­creased pro­duc­tion or eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty—by sim­ply en­sur­ing com­pli­ance, we will be in a sur­plus,” he added.

Em­ploy­ment trans­for­ma­tion plan

Tan­coo said in­creased busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty will al­so boost tax rev­enue.

He re­mind­ed that dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, he an­nounced the elim­i­na­tion of CEPEP and URP, re­plac­ing them with full-time, bet­ter-paid jobs. A new Em­ploy­ment Fund in the Min­istry of Fi­nance has been es­tab­lished with $475 mil­lion, to be used along­side the $310 mil­lion Un­em­ploy­ment Fund for job cre­ation.

He said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will pro­vide more de­tails on the job cre­ation ini­tia­tive dur­ing her par­lia­men­tary con­tri­bu­tion.

Fol­low­ing last Fri­day’s par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, Tan­coo said he saw a pre­view of the up­com­ing em­ploy­ment plan.

“Be pre­pared to be blown out of the wa­ter when Per­sad-Bisses­sar presents her job cre­ation plan. We will see op­por­tu­ni­ties in places they nev­er had be­fore. There will be trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in job cre­ation—it will no longer be about who you know. It will be based on ca­pa­bil­i­ty, qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and train­ing,” he said.