The Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) has wel­comed many of the 2026 Bud­get’s re­form mea­sures but cau­tioned that the pro­posed 0.25 per cent levy on com­mer­cial banks’ as­sets could damp­en ex­pan­sion and af­fect fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty if not care­ful­ly struc­tured.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day, BATT said it looks for­ward to meet­ing with the Fi­nance Min­istry to dis­cuss how the levy will be ap­plied, in­clud­ing whether gov­ern­ment se­cu­ri­ties and in­ter­bank place­ments will be ex­empt, and if the tax will be de­ductible from cor­po­rate in­come tax.

The As­so­ci­a­tion said its goal is to en­sure the mea­sure, “min­imis­es neg­a­tive ef­fects on ex­pan­sion ac­tiv­i­ties and pre­serves the sta­bil­i­ty of the bank­ing sec­tor, while care­ful­ly bal­anc­ing the gov­ern­ment’s need for ad­di­tion­al rev­enue with the pro­mo­tion of sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth.”

While rais­ing con­cerns about the new tax, BATT said it was en­cour­aged by the scope of the Bud­get’s pro­posed re­forms, in­clud­ing ef­forts to strength­en the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem, over­haul the VAT frame­work, and im­prove pub­lic spend­ing over­sight through a Fi­nan­cial Over­sight and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee.

It al­so wel­comed the gov­ern­ment’s em­pha­sis on digi­tis­ing pub­lic ser­vices, im­prov­ing trade lo­gis­tics, and ad­vanc­ing pay­ment plat­forms—ini­tia­tives it said would boost na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­vestor con­fi­dence.

“Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go have in­vest­ed con­sid­er­able sums in fos­ter­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the bank­ing sec­tor and we look for­ward to work­ing with the rel­e­vant bod­ies in due course,” BATT said.

The As­so­ci­a­tion said it ex­pects more de­tails on the var­i­ous mea­sures and their im­ple­men­ta­tion time­lines in the com­ing months.