Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Plan­ning Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry Kennedy Swarats­ingh says Gov­ern­ment’s $2.9 bil­lion mid-year sup­ple­men­ta­tion is aimed at strength­en­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty while cre­at­ing the con­di­tions nec­es­sary for long-term eco­nom­ic growth.

Con­tribut­ing to de­bate on the Fi­nance (Sup­ple­men­ta­tion and Vari­a­tion of Ap­pro­pri­a­tion) (Fi­nan­cial Year 2026) Bill in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Swarats­ingh ar­gued that crime re­duc­tion and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment are close­ly linked, say­ing busi­ness­es and in­vestors are more like­ly to ex­pand and cre­ate jobs in a safe and sta­ble en­vi­ron­ment.

A ma­jor por­tion of the sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing has been di­rect­ed to­wards na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which will re­ceive $64.2 mil­lion for uni­forms, ve­hi­cles, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems, main­te­nance, rental fa­cil­i­ties and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port. Fund­ing will al­so sup­port radar sur­veil­lance sys­tems, he­li­copter main­te­nance and op­er­a­tional readi­ness.

“At a time when cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to de­mand stronger ac­tion against crime, we are pro­vid­ing our se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies with the re­sources nec­es­sary to per­form their du­ties,” Swarats­ingh said.

“We can­not build a dy­nam­ic econ­o­my with­in an un­safe en­vi­ron­ment. We are there­fore com­mit­ted to cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty up­on which we will build strong eco­nom­ic growth.”

The min­is­ter point­ed to what he de­scribed as en­cour­ag­ing gains in crime fight­ing, cit­ing fig­ures from the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty which showed that 4,494 crimes were tack­led dur­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s first eight months in of­fice.

He al­so said the mur­der rate had fall­en by 42 per cent as of De­cem­ber 2025 and that T&T had moved off the list of the world’s ten most vi­o­lent coun­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to Swarats­ingh, con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in law en­force­ment and se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture is nec­es­sary to sus­tain those gains and fur­ther im­prove pub­lic safe­ty.

Be­yond crime fight­ing, the min­is­ter used his con­tri­bu­tion to out­line Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness and at­tract greater pri­vate-sec­tor in­vest­ment.

He ac­knowl­edged that busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to face lengthy ap­proval process­es, frag­ment­ed reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tems and in­con­sis­tent re­quire­ments across gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

To ad­dress those chal­lenges, he said Gov­ern­ment has be­gun stream­lin­ing ap­provals, im­prov­ing co­or­di­na­tion among agen­cies, strength­en­ing in­vest­ment fa­cil­i­ta­tion and cre­at­ing greater reg­u­la­to­ry cer­tain­ty.

“The ease of do­ing busi­ness re­form rep­re­sents a pre­req­ui­site as we seek to at­tract both do­mes­tic and for­eign in­vest­ment,” he said.

Swarats­ingh re­vealed that a spe­cial fi­nance clus­ter com­pris­ing the Min­is­ters of Fi­nance, En­er­gy, Trade, For­eign Af­fairs and Plan­ning had been es­tab­lished to iden­ti­fy and re­move bot­tle­necks af­fect­ing busi­ness­es.

He said the re­forms are in­tend­ed to ac­cel­er­ate pri­vate in­vest­ment in non-en­er­gy sec­tors, mo­bilise cap­i­tal for in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment and im­prove T&T’s com­pet­i­tive­ness.

The min­is­ter al­so high­light­ed Gov­ern­ment’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da, point­ing to the work of the Na­tion­al Pay­ments and In­no­va­tion Cen­tre, which is in­tro­duc­ing on­line pay­ment ser­vices across the pub­lic sec­tor.

He said cit­i­zens can now pur­chase Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion tick­ets on­line, while so­cial wel­fare pay­ments and ser­vices of­fered by agen­cies such as the Min­istry of Trans­port are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing moved to dig­i­tal plat­forms.

“These ini­tia­tives are de­signed to make life and busi­ness eas­i­er for every­one in T&T by us­ing tech­nol­o­gy as an en­abler,” he said.

Swarats­ingh al­so de­fend­ed al­lo­ca­tions for pub­lic util­i­ties, fu­el sub­si­dies and so­cial sup­port pro­grammes, ar­gu­ing that they re­main nec­es­sary to pro­tect cit­i­zens from ris­ing liv­ing costs.

Fund­ing al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties will sup­port elec­tric­i­ty re­bates, street light­ing, wa­ter ser­vices and op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, while al­lo­ca­tions to the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries will help meet fu­el sub­sidy oblig­a­tions.

He said the fu­el sub­sidy pro­gramme helps cush­ion con­sumers from high­er en­er­gy costs, sta­bilise trans­porta­tion ex­pens­es and lim­it in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures.

He al­so not­ed Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion ear­li­er this fis­cal year to re­duce the re­tail price of su­per gaso­line by $1 per litre.

Turn­ing to in­vest­ment and fi­nanc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, Swarats­ingh said Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to sta­bilise the econ­o­my had im­proved in­vestor con­fi­dence and strength­ened T&T’s ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms.

He not­ed that Moody’s re­cent de­ci­sion to re­vise the coun­try’s out­look from neg­a­tive to sta­ble had en­hanced in­vestor con­fi­dence and sig­nalled im­prov­ing eco­nom­ic prospects.

Swarats­ingh said Gov­ern­ment is al­so ex­plor­ing ways to ex­pand pri­vate-sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and im­prove ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing for busi­ness­es.

He main­tained that the sup­ple­men­tary ap­pro­pri­a­tion bal­ances fis­cal dis­ci­pline with strate­gic in­vest­ment in se­cu­ri­ty, pub­lic ser­vices, so­cial pro­grammes and eco­nom­ic re­forms de­signed to sup­port sus­tain­able growth.

“In short, our eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty is im­prov­ing, our for­eign and lo­cal in­vestor con­fi­dence is be­ing strength­ened and there is in­creased in­ter­est in in­vest­ing in T&T,” he told sen­a­tors.