In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira last night raised con­cerns in the Sen­ate about whether Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 2026 bud­get ac­counts for pos­si­ble re­gion­al in­sta­bil­i­ty aris­ing from height­ened ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and the Unit­ed States.

He not­ed that while life in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains nor­mal and the coun­try is not at war, the bud­get as­sumes a sta­ble ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment, un­in­ter­rupt­ed trade, en­er­gy ex­ports, and in­vestor con­fi­dence—as­sump­tions now chal­lenged by geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments.

Vieira high­light­ed risks to the en­er­gy sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly projects like the Drag­on gas field, which de­pend on cross-bor­der co­op­er­a­tion and for­eign in­vest­ment. He ques­tioned whether pro­ject­ed en­er­gy rev­enues had been stress-test­ed against po­lit­i­cal risk, not­ing that ris­ing re­gion­al in­sta­bil­i­ty could slow in­vest­ment, in­crease in­sur­ance costs, and erode fis­cal space.

He al­so not­ed the po­ten­tial hu­man­i­tar­i­an im­pact, cit­ing the in­flux of Venezue­lan na­tion­als and the strain on pub­lic ser­vices, and urged that the bud­get an­tic­i­pate fund­ing for bor­der man­age­ment, refugee as­sis­tance, and com­mu­ni­ty in­te­gra­tion. “These are not acts of char­i­ty. They are mat­ters of na­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty,” he said.

The sen­a­tor called for en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty readi­ness to ad­dress mar­itime risks, il­le­gal cross­ings, and traf­fick­ing, stress­ing that vig­i­lance is cheap­er than un­pre­pared­ness. He al­so rec­om­mend­ed diplo­mat­ic fore­sight, urg­ing that for­eign pol­i­cy, trade, en­er­gy diplo­ma­cy, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an pos­ture align with na­tion­al in­ter­ests to avoid the coun­try be­ing drawn in­to broad­er re­gion­al con­fronta­tions.

Vieira sug­gest­ed con­tin­gency mea­sures, in­clud­ing a ded­i­cat­ed re­serve fund for ex­ter­nal shocks, flex­i­ble fis­cal rules to ad­just spend­ing if en­er­gy rev­enues fall, and strength­ened do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion in agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and cre­ative in­dus­tries to re­duce vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. “Fis­cal plan­ning with­out con­tin­gency is fis­cal plan­ning by hope,” he warned.

Sen­a­tor Vieira said clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion with cit­i­zens is es­sen­tial to main­tain trust and con­fi­dence amid un­cer­tain­ty. He said  the gov­ern­ment must “com­mu­ni­cate open­ly with the cit­i­zen­ry. Un­cer­tain­ty breeds anx­i­ety, and anx­i­ety un­der­mines con­fi­dence. The pub­lic should un­der­stand that while risks ex­ist, the state is alert, ca­pa­ble and pre­pared. He said, trans­paren­cy builds trust. If ad­just­ments be­come nec­es­sary lat­er in the fis­cal year, they will be bet­ter ac­cept­ed if cit­i­zens know in ad­vance that such pos­si­bil­i­ties were an­tic­i­pat­ed.