Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh will this morn­ing present Gov­ern­ment’s 2026 Bud­get in the Sen­ate as he pi­lots the de­bate of the pack­age there.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo pre­sent­ed the Bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Oc­to­ber 13. Swarats­ingh is a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

The ef­fects, im­pli­ca­tions, and T&T’s path—good and bad—aris­ing from the 2026 Bud­get mea­sures will be dis­cussed amid a land­scape where height­ened ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela are in force. There are con­cerns lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly, and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of war, and par­tic­u­lar­ly deep con­cerns about the ef­fect this could have on Caribbean and glob­al economies, and whether T&T’s Bud­get for 2026 will cov­er all even­tu­al­i­ties.

At last Sat­ur­day’s Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty 86th Con­ven­tion, Bar­ba­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, not­ing “ru­mours of war” cir­cu­lat­ing, said that even as Bar­ba­dos’ In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund pro­grammes have end­ed, Bar­ba­dos would keep the IMF on “speed di­al”, as that is­land needs a safe­ty net it can ac­ti­vate at a mo­ment’s no­tice if some­thing hap­pens.

The Sen­ate de­bate on the $59.2 bil­lion Bud­get is the last phase of the Bud­get ex­er­cis­es nec­es­sary to im­ple­ment the pack­age. It needs to be in place by the end of the month so that Gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions and pub­lic ser­vants’ pay­ments can be processed.

In the first phase, af­ter the Bud­get was pre­sent­ed, it was de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives two weeks ago.

In the sec­ond phase, last week, it was ex­am­ined in Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, where Op­po­si­tion MPs grilled the Gov­ern­ment on line items in the Bud­get doc­u­ments.

This third and last phase—with de­bate in the Sen­ate—is al­lo­cat­ed five days. How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that the de­bate may fin­ish be­fore that time so that the Bud­get, in its form of an Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill, can be as­sent­ed to by the Pres­i­dent and im­ple­ment­ed with­in the nec­es­sary time­frame.

The Op­po­si­tion de­bate is ex­pect­ed to be led by Sen­a­tor Vish­nu Dhan­paul, a for­mer Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Fi­nance Min­istry for many years. Spot­light con­tri­bu­tions are al­so ex­pect­ed to come from the In­de­pen­dent bench, as well as Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Dar­rell Al­la­har and oth­er Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors.