An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For many house­holds, the test of a na­tion­al Bud­get is not the size of the al­lo­ca­tions or the promis­es made from the par­lia­men­tary podi­um, but how far the salary stretch­es when the bills are paid.

As Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo pre­pares to present the 2027 Bud­get on Oc­to­ber 12, the Busi­ness Guardian spoke with peo­ple work­ing in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors about how their stan­dard of liv­ing has changed over the past year.

The re­spons­es point to a shift in house­hold be­hav­iour, with con­sumers cut­ting back, chang­ing brands, shop­ping around for dis­counts and re­duc­ing spend­ing on restau­rants, en­ter­tain­ment and al­co­hol.

The 2026 Bud­get, Tan­coo’s first, out­lined a $59.232 bil­lion pack­age for fis­cal 2026, with pro­ject­ed rev­enue of $55.367 bil­lion and a pro­ject­ed deficit of $3.865 bil­lion.

Among the mea­sures in­tro­duced were a $1 re­duc­tion in the price of su­per gaso­line, high­er du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co, in­creased fees and an in­crease Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions from 13.2 per cent to 16.2 per cent.

How­ev­er, for those in­ter­viewed, the ben­e­fits of some mea­sures have been over­shad­owed by the cost of liv­ing.

Pub­lic-sec­tor work­er Pa­tri­cia Thomas de­scribed the changes as a sub­stan­tial shift in her house­hold spend­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the su­per­mar­ket.

“Prices are ridicu­lous. The cost of every­thing has sky­rock­et­ed,” Thomas main­tained.

She es­ti­mat­ed that what once cost her house­hold around $1,100 to $1,200 for gro­ceries can now ap­proach $1,500 to $1,800, de­pend­ing on what is pur­chased. When gro­cery shop­ping and PriceS­mart pur­chas­es are com­bined, she es­ti­mates the house­hold’s spend­ing has moved from rough­ly $2,000 to be­tween $2,500 to $2,800.

Thomas has changed the way she shops, in­clud­ing check­ing what is al­ready in the cup­boards be­fore mak­ing a shop­ping list and buy­ing on­ly what is nec­es­sary.

“I don’t go to the gro­cery store now. I stick to my list, and I look in every cup­board be­fore I make that list,” she ex­plained.

She has al­so changed brands as prices have climbed.

Thomas re­called buy­ing Charmin toi­let pa­per for about $195 rough­ly a year and a half ago. The price sub­se­quent­ly rose to around $210 and then $220, at which point she stopped buy­ing it.

“The oth­er thing that has hap­pened is peo­ple have be­gun to ad­just the brand to suit their pock­et be­cause the brands that you were pre­vi­ous­ly buy­ing have now be­come un­af­ford­able,” she ob­served.

The su­per­mar­ket squeeze

Thomas be­lieves the im­pact is ex­tend­ing be­yond in­di­vid­ual house­holds to restau­rants, ho­tels and re­tail­ers as con­sumers be­come more de­lib­er­ate about where and when they spend.

“Peo­ple don’t just buy stuff ran­dom­ly any­more. They shop dif­fer­ent­ly. They don’t just buy food ran­dom­ly,” she main­tained.

She point­ed to dis­count pro­mo­tions as an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant part of the house­hold shop­ping rou­tine, with Massy’s month­ly pro­mo­tions at­tract­ing heav­ier crowds.

“If you go to Massy Su­per­mar­ket on a nor­mal day now, it is a breeze. When they put out the fly­ers at the end of the month, it is a mad­house,” she ob­served.

Thomas al­so linked chang­ing con­sumer be­hav­iour to the pres­sure on restau­rants and oth­er busi­ness­es.

“If your clien­tele do have the re­sources to sup­port your busi­ness, they will not come, not be­cause they have any­thing against your busi­ness but be­cause they just can’t af­ford it,” she main­tained.

She point­ed to Restau­rant Week pro­mo­tions be­ing ex­tend­ed by some busi­ness­es as an in­di­ca­tion of the ef­fort re­quired to at­tract cus­tomers.

Thomas al­so be­lieves the high­er cost of al­co­hol has changed both house­hold and so­cial spend­ing.

The 2026 Bud­get dou­bled the du­ty on rum and spir­its from $79.25 to $158.50 and the du­ty on beer from $5.14 to $10.28. The in­creas­es took im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Thomas has large­ly stopped buy­ing al­co­hol from su­per­mar­kets and now makes pur­chas­es at the air­port when trav­el­ling.

“I have not bought any al­co­hol in a gro­cery since then be­cause it’s crazy when you go out to have din­ner. The price of a cock­tail, the price of a glass of wine, you see how ex­pen­sive it is now,” she main­tained.

She re­called a re­cent restau­rant bill where a Brandy Alexan­der that would nor­mal­ly cost be­tween $60 and $70 was priced at $101.

“I didn’t even buy any of the cock­tails. I bought a glass of juice, which I still paid $40 for,” she re­called.

Thomas al­so ob­served that some restau­rants ap­pear to be re­duc­ing the quan­ti­ty of al­co­hol in drinks rather than in­creas­ing prices.

“What some restau­rants have done is that, rather than in­crease the price of the drink, they have de­creased the amount of al­co­hol they put in it. So you get a wa­tered-down ver­sion of the drink,” she main­tained.

The of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics re­flect a sharp move­ment in the al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co cat­e­go­ry. In June 2026, the cat­e­go­ry was 25.3 per cent high­er than in June 2025, while over­all in­fla­tion was 0.3 per cent and food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages were 0.9 per cent high­er year-on-year.

The June fig­ures al­so show the dis­tinc­tion be­tween over­all in­fla­tion and in­di­vid­ual house­hold ex­pens­es. Food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages rose 1.4 per cent be­tween May and June 2026, with in­creas­es were record­ed for sev­er­al fresh food items.

Pub­lic-sec­tor work­er Cherelle Lu­cas has ex­pe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar squeeze.

She es­ti­mat­ed that house­hold gro­cery ex­pen­di­ture has in­creased by at least 40 per cent, forc­ing ad­just­ments to the way the house­hold spends.

“It has caused you to make ad­just­ments to your liv­ing sit­u­a­tion. We have to cut back on what we are ac­cus­tomed to pur­chas­ing be­cause of the in­crease in ex­pen­di­ture,” Lu­cas main­tained.

For Lu­cas, the im­pact ex­tends in­to her busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

She ex­plained that the ris­ing cost of Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions has in­flu­enced her ap­proach to hir­ing, with the busi­ness mov­ing away from em­ploy­ing some peo­ple di­rect­ly and in­stead en­gag­ing them as con­trac­tors.

“As a small busi­ness, the cost of hav­ing to pay so much is too high. Be­cause of the con­sis­tent in­crease in NIS, it has caused us as a busi­ness to move from bring­ing in di­rect em­ploy­ees to hir­ing them as con­trac­tors,” she ex­plained.

Lu­cas al­so does not feel the ben­e­fit of the su­per gaso­line re­duc­tion be­cause she us­es pre­mi­um gaso­line.

“The re­duc­tion in su­per gaso­line did noth­ing for me be­cause my ve­hi­cle us­es pre­mi­um. Un­less they do some re­duc­tion in pre­mi­um, that is not ben­e­fit­ting me at all,” she main­tained.

She ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that the mea­sure would ben­e­fit mo­torists who use su­per gaso­line.

“While it may not have been ben­e­fi­cial to me, it was ben­e­fi­cial for those who use su­per gaso­line,” Lu­cas ob­served.

Less dis­pos­able in­come

Pri­vate-sec­tor work­er An­tho­ny James be­lieves the way the Gov­ern­ment mea­sures the cost of liv­ing does not al­ways re­flect the full range of prod­ucts house­holds pur­chase.

He point­ed to the con­cept of a ba­sic cost-of-liv­ing bas­ket, ar­gu­ing that con­sumers do not nec­es­sar­i­ly live with­in the nar­row range of es­sen­tial items used to cal­cu­late such mea­sures.

“When they give you a cost-of-liv­ing bas­ket, it is the ba­sics. But we are not a so­ci­ety that lives at cost-of-liv­ing lev­els,” James main­tained.

He ar­gued that changes in in­di­vid­ual items can pro­duce a dif­fer­ent pic­ture de­pend­ing on which prod­ucts are in­clud­ed.

“You could choose your bas­ket and ma­nip­u­late the fig­ures to show that the cost of liv­ing isn’t go­ing up. But we are not liv­ing on the ba­sics. We are buy­ing ham, lamb and jam, and it is those things that are go­ing up sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” he main­tained.

Pub­lic-sec­tor work­er Joseph Lopez al­so de­scribed the pres­sure as one that is felt over time rather than through one dra­mat­ic in­crease in a sin­gle shop­ping trip.

For his house­hold, a sub­stan­tial gro­cery shop can cost be­tween $2,000 and $3,000.

“I may spend some­where be­tween $2,000 and $3,000, and al­though I try to shop fort­night­ly, I still find my­self re­turn­ing to the su­per­mar­ket or mar­ket more fre­quent­ly for per­ish­ables and ba­sic items,” Lopez ex­plained.

For Lopez, the more no­tice­able change is the fre­quen­cy with which mon­ey leaves the house­hold.

“What has changed is not nec­es­sar­i­ly one dra­mat­ic in­crease at the cash reg­is­ter, but the fre­quen­cy with which mon­ey leaves your pock­et,” he main­tained.

He was re­luc­tant to at­tach an ex­act per­cent­age to his in­creased house­hold ex­pen­di­ture with­out com­par­ing re­ceipts over time.

“The lived ex­pe­ri­ence is that the same house­hold bud­get does not stretch as com­fort­ably as it once did,” Lopez main­tained.

That dis­tinc­tion is im­por­tant as Gov­ern­ment pre­pares for the next Bud­get. The June in­fla­tion rate of 0.3 per cent may ap­pear mod­est, but the of­fi­cial da­ta al­so show sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences be­tween cat­e­gories of house­hold spend­ing.

The labour mar­ket has al­so added an­oth­er lay­er to house­hold con­cerns. In the first quar­ter of 2026, av­er­age em­ploy­ment fell by 1 per cent from the pre­vi­ous quar­ter to 564,000, while the num­ber of peo­ple with­out jobs and seek­ing work rose 27.2 per cent quar­ter-on-quar­ter to 27,100. The un­em­ploy­ment rate was 5.4 per cent.

What house­holds want

For those in­ter­viewed, the is­sue go­ing in­to Oc­to­ber 12 is there­fore not sim­ply whether the Gov­ern­ment can an­nounce ad­di­tion­al spend­ing.

It is whether poli­cies can trans­late in­to more dis­pos­able in­come, greater house­hold sta­bil­i­ty and em­ploy­ment that pro­vides enough in­come to meet ris­ing ex­pens­es.

Thomas wants greater at­ten­tion paid to food prices and the pres­sures fac­ing con­sumers.

Lu­cas wants pol­i­cy­mak­ers to ex­am­ine the im­pact of food costs and em­ploy­ment-re­lat­ed ex­pens­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly for small­er busi­ness­es.

Lopez wants the Bud­get to con­nect fis­cal mea­sures more di­rect­ly to the dai­ly ex­pe­ri­ence of house­holds.

“For me, the re­al ques­tion is: af­ter a house­hold pays for food, trans­porta­tion, util­i­ties, hous­ing and oth­er es­sen­tial ex­pens­es, how much mon­ey is ac­tu­al­ly left?” Lopez main­tained.

He be­lieves that dis­pos­able in­come should be cen­tral to the dis­cus­sion about the next Bud­get.

“Eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy be­comes mean­ing­ful when peo­ple can see that their in­come is stretch­ing fur­ther and that one un­ex­pect­ed ex­pense does not im­me­di­ate­ly place them in fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty,” he main­tained.

Lopez al­so wants more at­ten­tion paid to em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, skills de­vel­op­ment, do­mes­tic agri­cul­ture and sup­port for small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es.

He be­lieves an­nounce­ments about job cre­ation should be fol­lowed by clear in­for­ma­tion on how many po­si­tions were ac­tu­al­ly filled and how many house­holds ben­e­fit­ed.