Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt

Over the past decade, Trinidad and To­ba­go has de­liv­ered bud­get af­ter bud­get promis­ing sta­bil­i­ty and growth. Yet, a clos­er look at the num­bers re­veals a con­sis­tent chal­lenge: the coun­try con­tin­ues to spend more than it earns.

In 2015, pro­ject­ed gov­ern­ment rev­enue from the pre­sent­ed bud­get state­ment stood at just over TT$60 bil­lion, while ex­pen­di­ture reached about TT$64 bil­lion, re­sult­ing in a deficit of more than TT$4 bil­lion. That pat­tern of deficit spend­ing has been re­peat­ed in al­most every bud­get since.

The sole ex­cep­tion came in 2022, when a tem­po­rary surge in glob­al en­er­gy prices, trig­gered by geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict, pushed gov­ern­ment rev­enue high enough to pro­duce a TT$1.33 bil­lion sur­plus.

Revenue & Expenditure

How­ev­er, that wind­fall was short-lived. In 2023, stronger oil and gas prices lift­ed pro­ject­ed rev­enue to TT$56 bil­lion, nar­row­ing the deficit to TT$1.5 bil­lion — the small­est of the decade. Just a year ear­li­er, in 2022, the coun­try record­ed its deep­est short­fall in re­cent years — a TT$9 bil­lion gap be­tween spend­ing and in­come.

Over the last ten years, Trinidad and To­ba­go has spent a to­tal of near­ly TT$615 bil­lion, us­ing the pro­ject­ed fig­ures from past bud­get al­lo­ca­tions, re­sult­ing in a cu­mu­la­tive bud­get­ed deficit of TT$56.7 bil­lion. To cov­er those gaps, the coun­try has re­lied heav­i­ly on bor­row­ing, push­ing na­tion­al debt steadi­ly up­ward.

The num­bers al­so high­light Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­dur­ing de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor. In 2015, oil rev­enue con­tributed TT$21 bil­lion to gov­ern­ment cof­fers. By 2017, that fig­ure had plunged to just TT$2.5 bil­lion as glob­al prices col­lapsed.

Fiscal Deficits

In more re­cent years, high­er en­er­gy prices have once again buoyed state rev­enues, with TT$25 bil­lion col­lect­ed from oil and gas in 2023 alone. Mean­while, non-oil rev­enues have re­mained rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble, av­er­ag­ing be­tween TT$30 bil­lion and TT$35 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

Even dur­ing pe­ri­ods of stronger earn­ings, gov­ern­ment spend­ing has re­mained el­e­vat­ed, fluc­tu­at­ing be­tween TT$50 bil­lion and TT$64 bil­lion each year. Wages and sub­si­dies ac­count for a large share of ex­pen­di­ture, leav­ing lit­tle room for cuts with­out sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy changes.

Oil VS Non Oil Revenue 2015

Af­ter ten years of per­sis­tent deficits, the da­ta tell a clear sto­ry: Trinidad and To­ba­go has yet to achieve last­ing fis­cal bal­ance. The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready in­di­cat­ed that the up­com­ing bud­get will again be a deficit bud­get.

As the coun­try looks to the fu­ture, the re­al test will be whether new mea­sures can curb spend­ing, di­ver­si­fy rev­enue sources, and fi­nal­ly shift the na­tion­al ac­counts to­wards sus­tain­able growth.

Oil vs Non-Oil Revenue 2021

Oil VS Non Oil Revenue 2023