BUDGET 2027

Pre­sent­ed by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo

Oc­to­ber 12, 2026

In­tro­duc­tion

It is my priv­i­lege to present the 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get to this Ho­n­ourable House and to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

When this UNC Ad­min­is­tra­tion en­tered of­fice 18 months ago, we in­her­it­ed the lega­cy of the PNM: a sig­nif­i­cant debt bur­den, in­clud­ing $12.04 bil­lion due al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.

They left $10.6 bil­lion due in VAT and oth­er tax re­funds, and bil­lions owed to work­ers in ne­go­ti­a­tions set­tled and to be set­tled.

But more than that, con­sid­er­able pub­lic li­a­bil­i­ties con­strained cash flows and nar­rowed fis­cal space to such an ex­tent that it was chal­leng­ing to achieve our de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives.

We met a Min­istry of Fi­nance forced to man­age its cash flow on a day to day ba­sis.

We did not throw our hands in the air.

The pop­u­la­tion gave us a man­date to make this coun­try bet­ter and we rose to the chal­lenge.

Un­der the de­ci­sive lead­er­ship of the Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, through re­spon­si­ble fis­cal man­age­ment, and trans­par­ent gov­er­nance, we be­gan restor­ing con­fi­dence, cre­at­ing new jobs, re­build­ing in­sti­tu­tions and lay­ing the foun­da­tions for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­new­al. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

The dire cir­cum­stances we met up­on as­sum­ing of­fice de­mand­ed fun­da­men­tal re­form and the de­ci­sive lead­er­ship of a com­pe­tent Ad­min­is­tra­tion, laser-fo­cused on mak­ing the long-over­due, dif­fi­cult but nec­es­sary de­ci­sions.

Those op­po­site had the time, re­sources and op­por­tu­ni­ty to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, build stronger and more ac­count­able pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, at­tract in­vest­ment, ex­pand pro­duc­tion and cre­ate mean­ing­ful jobs.

But they failed to de­liv­er.

Un­der the PNM,

Projects stalled.

Pub­lic as­sets de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

En­er­gy pro­duc­tion de­clined.

The mid­dle class was dec­i­mat­ed.

Busi­ness­es strug­gled.

Pub­lic con­fi­dence erod­ed.

For­eign ex­change be­came scarce.

For­eign in­vest­ment col­lapsed.

Our in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion was com­pro­mised.

A bloody crime wave en­gulfed our coun­try.

70,600 per­sons lost their jobs.

The econ­o­my con­tract­ed by 17 per cent.

Pub­lic debt sky­rock­et­ed.

And hope for brighter days evap­o­rat­ed.

I re­count these facts not to sim­ply re­hash the past but to put in per­spec­tive, the mag­ni­tude of our task and the sig­nif­i­cance of the progress al­ready made.

In the year ahead, this Gov­ern­ment will in­crease its in­vest­ment in our peo­ple and in the pro­duc­tive sec­tors of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

We will con­tin­ue to re­store con­fi­dence in our econ­o­my and in­sti­tu­tions.

We will con­tin­ue to in­vest in the ex­pan­sion of the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors and di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my in the ar­eas of agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, tourism and tech­nol­o­gy.

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty will re­main a cen­tral pri­or­i­ty.

I ex­tend my heart­felt grat­i­tude to the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, for her con­tin­ued con­fi­dence in me to guide our na­tion’s fis­cal and eco­nom­ic af­fairs.

I al­so thank my Cab­i­net col­leagues, the ded­i­cat­ed staff of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, oth­er Min­istries and State Agen­cies, as well as our part­ners in the pri­vate sec­tor, labour, acad­e­mia and civ­il so­ci­ety for their in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to the de­vel­op­ment of this Bud­get.

Build­ing on Our First Year: Mov­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go For­ward

This Gov­ern­ment has po­si­tioned our na­tion on a path to sus­tain­able growth and eco­nom­ic re­silience. Fol­low­ing a decade of reck­less PNM mis­man­age­ment, this coun­try is fi­nal­ly mov­ing steadi­ly for­ward, and the re­sults are vis­i­ble.

We re­stored fis­cal sta­bil­i­ty: They left us with a deficit that was 5.8 per cent of GDP. By June 2026, we re­duced the deficit to 4 per cent of GDP and moved the coun­try clos­er to a near-bal­anced pri­ma­ry po­si­tion. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We re­built in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence: In May 2026, the IMF sig­naled in­creas­ing in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence in the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy di­rec­tion. In June 2026, Moody’s up­grad­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s rat­ing out­look from Neg­a­tive to Sta­ble while reaf­firm­ing the coun­try’s Ba2 rat­ing. In Ju­ly 2026, Stan­dard and Poor’s reaf­firmed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­vest­ment-grade cred­it rat­ing and just a few days ago, Cari­CRIS al­so reaf­firmed our Cari-Dou­ble A cred­it rat­ings, with a Sta­ble Out­look. They all agree: Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion is im­prov­ing, con­fi­dence is re­turn­ing and the Gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy is de­liv­er­ing re­sults. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

But there’s more. We are no longer black­list­ed: Un­der the PNM, Trinidad and To­ba­go was placed on the EU’s list of non-co­op­er­a­tive ju­ris­dic­tions bur­den­ing our coun­try with se­ri­ous rep­u­ta­tion­al and eco­nom­ic harm.

In Feb­ru­ary 2026 we were re­moved from the EU’s black­list. In April 2026, we se­cured a per­ma­nent World Bank Group pres­ence and in June 2026,he coun­try was elect­ed to serve as a non-per­ma­nent mem­ber of the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil for 2027–2028. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

We pro­tect­ed the na­tion’s sav­ings for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions: Un­der our stew­ard­ship, the HSF grew from US$5.98 bil­lion as at April 30, 2025 to US$6.58 bil­lion as at Au­gust 31, 2026, the high­est lev­el of sav­ings in the his­to­ry of the Fund. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We im­proved the pub­lic’s ac­cess to for­eign ex­change: Since Ju­ly 2026, the Cen­tral Bank has in­ject­ed an ad­di­tion­al US$10 mil­lion cash every month to com­mer­cial banks to ease the for­eign ex­change chal­lenges faced by the av­er­age cit­i­zen. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We saved the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund from col­lapse: The for­mer Ad­min­is­tra­tion brought the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund to the point of col­lapse, hav­ing to sell off its as­sets to meet month­ly bills. This means that the NIB would not have been able to pay re­tire­ment, ma­ter­ni­ty, sick­ness, sur­vivors’ ben­e­fits and fu­ner­al grants. We have ex­tend­ed the life of the Fund by more than a decade. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

We em­pow­ered our cit­i­zens: In Jan­u­ary 2026, we en­act­ed the Home In­va­sion (Self De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty) Act, 2025, crim­i­nal­is­ing home in­va­sions and em­pow­er­ing home­own­ers and oc­cu­pants to legal­ly de­fend them­selves and their prop­er­ty.

We are restor­ing safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty to our com­mu­ni­ties: In 2025, mur­ders fell by 42 per cent from 626 the year be­fore to 369, the low­est an­nu­al mur­der toll in more than a decade!

Shoot­ings and wound­ing, rob­beries, bur­glar­ies and break-ins have all de­clined by over 20 per cent! We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We strength­ened Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice: We re­fur­bished po­lice sta­tions in La Hor­quet­ta, Mor­vant, Four Roads and Point Fortin. We pro­vid­ed 67 new SU­Vs to the TTPS and by De­cem­ber 2026, 700 new of­fi­cers would be added.

We are es­tab­lish­ing 30 joint po­lice-army posts across Trinidad and To­ba­go: We have al­ready op­er­a­tionalised the first 3 mi­cro po­lice units. To­mor­row, the Prime Min­is­ter will launch 3 more units in To­ba­go. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We im­proved the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice: We en­act­ed 36 pieces of leg­is­la­tion ad­dress­ing crit­i­cal na­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing vic­tims’ rights, work­ers’ rights, bail re­form, DNA ev­i­dence, pa­role and ad­vanced pas­sen­ger in­for­ma­tion and pas­sen­ger name record sys­tems to strength­en bor­der se­cu­ri­ty. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We ho­n­oured our com­mit­ment to Teach­ers: From March 2026 11,000 teach­ers ben­e­fit­ted from high­er salaries, to­geth­er with the con­sol­i­da­tion of the CO­LA. Last month we paid off all the ar­rears val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $688 mil­lion.

We ho­n­oured our com­mit­ment to the NUGFW: We rat­i­fied the Agree­ment for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 dai­ly-rat­ed work­ers re­sult­ing in a 10 per cent wage in­crease and $510.2 mil­lion in ar­rears.

We ho­n­oured our com­mit­ment to the PSA: We com­menced wage ne­go­ti­a­tions af­fect­ing al­most 40,000 pub­lic-sec­tor work­ers, and to date, we have pro­vid­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $224.8 mil­lion in back­pay and put all 40,000 pub­lic ser­vants on their new high­er salary. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We re­moved tax­es on pri­vate pen­sions: This al­lows ben­e­fi­cia­ries to re­tain more of the ben­e­fits they worked through­out their lives to earn. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We es­tab­lished the Women’s Health Fund: The Women’s Health Fund Com­mit­tee is work­ing and soon, men­stru­al kits, health ed­u­ca­tion and pub­lic out­reach will be pro­vid­ed to sup­port women and girls, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties. In fis­cal 2027, I pro­pose to al­lo­cate a fur­ther $5 mil­lion to this ini­tia­tive. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

We ex­pand­ed health­care for all cit­i­zens: In No­vem­ber 2025, we re­opened the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal. By the end of Ju­ly, 2026, 1,075 same day surg­eries were con­duct­ed, 950 chil­dren had al­ready re­ceived spe­cial­ist clin­i­cal ser­vices and 1,338 per­sons ac­cessed out­pa­tient phar­ma­cy ser­vices. We opened the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in May 2026 bring­ing crit­i­cal emer­gency ser­vices to thou­sands of cit­i­zens in east Trinidad. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We es­tab­lished a Na­tion­al Pros­thet­ics Cen­tre: With the as­sis­tance of the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia and Jaipur Foot USA, we es­tab­lished Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first-ever Na­tion­al Pros­thet­ics Cen­tre in Clarke Road, Pe­nal. This Cen­tre pro­vides on-site rapid cus­tom fit­ting and ad­just­ments for pros­thet­ic limbs, free of charge to our cit­i­zens. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We strength­ened Fire Ser­vices and Emer­gency Re­sponse: We com­mis­sioned 6 new fire ap­pli­ances and ab­sorbed 280 fire of­fi­cers. We re­opened the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion restor­ing 24-hour fire and emer­gency-re­sponse ser­vices to 56 com­mu­ni­ties and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 118,000 cit­i­zens of South Trinidad. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

We made Gov­ern­ment ser­vices faster and eas­i­er: We ex­pand­ed dig­i­tal pub­lic ser­vices to cre­ate a more ef­fi­cient cus­tomer-fo­cused pub­lic sec­tor through Ver­i­fyTT, the coun­try’s first na­tion­al stan­dard for dig­i­tal ver­i­fi­able cre­den­tials; we im­ple­ment­ed the long-over­due Air­port On­line Ar­rival/De­par­ture Forms ex­pe­dit­ing pas­sen­ger move­ment through our ports of en­try. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We in­tro­duced elec­tron­ic pay­ments at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion: In No­vem­ber 2025, LINX deb­it-card ser­vice was in­tro­duced at the CED mak­ing pay­ments by im­porters and traders safer, faster and eas­i­er. Work is pro­gress­ing to ex­pand pay­ment ser­vices to in­clude cred­it-card and on­line pay­ment op­tions all of which will im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness and fa­cil­i­tate ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive trade.

We in­creased staffing at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise and In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sions: To date, more than 200 posts have been filled across these 2 crit­i­cal Di­vi­sions. I will elab­o­rate on the sig­nif­i­cant progress be­ing made at both Di­vi­sions lat­er in this pre­sen­ta­tion. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

We en­hanced NGC’s prof­itabil­i­ty: The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny record­ed prof­it af­ter tax for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025 of $3.46 bil­lion, its high­est lev­el in over 10 years, up by 111 per cent from 2024.

In May 2026, TTNGL is­sued a spe­cial in­ter­im div­i­dend pay­ment, re­turn­ing $154.8 mil­lion to share­hold­ers. This marks TTNGL’s first div­i­dend pay­ment to more than 11,400 share­hold­ers in al­most four years. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We re­vived the Steel In­dus­try at Point Lisas: An as­set that once sym­bol­ised in­dus­tri­al de­cline is now at­tract­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars in in­vest­ment, cre­at­ing hun­dreds of jobs and po­si­tion­ing Point Lisas once again, as a cen­tre of heavy in­dus­try and ad­vanced man­u­fac­tur­ing. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

We are ex­pand­ing do­mes­tic agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion to re­duce our food im­port bill: We re­moved VAT from all ma­chin­ery and equip­ment, as well as in­puts for hy­dro­pon­ic and green­house farm­ing, ze­ro-rat­ed key ma­te­ri­als for cul­ti­va­tion and an­i­mal health, and re­moved Cus­toms Du­ty on feed used for live­stock.

We opened the Brechin Cas­tle Agro-Pro­cess­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties for cas­sa­va flour, fruit and veg­etable pro­cess­ing and po­ten­tial ex­ports. We com­mis­sioned a 300-litre milk pas­teuri­sa­tion plant at the Sug­ar Cane Feeds Cen­tre, strength­en­ing the lo­cal dairy in­dus­try. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come!

We are strength­en­ing the UNIMED Group Health Plan: We in­ject­ed $20 mil­lion in­to the UNIMED Group Health Plan for month­ly-paid of­fi­cers of the Civ­il Ser­vice, the Teach­ing Ser­vice and cer­tain of­fice hold­ers with­in the purview of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion. This in­ter­ven­tion helped to re­duce the Plan’s deficit and set­tle out­stand­ing claims and pro­vid­ed much need­ed re­lief to mem­bers. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

I leave the de­tails of these and oth­er nu­mer­ous achieve­ments of this Ad­min­is­tra­tion to my col­leagues.

The glob­al econ­o­my con­tin­ues to be char­ac­terised by height­ened un­cer­tain­ty, geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, chang­ing trade pat­terns and re­la­tion­ships, rapid tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment and in­ten­si­fy­ing cli­mate risks.

The IMF projects glob­al growth to de­cel­er­ate in 2026 with el­e­vat­ed en­er­gy prices, in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures and height­ened glob­al com­pe­ti­tion con­tin­u­ing to present sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly for small, open economies seek­ing to ex­pand ex­ports, at­tract in­vest­ment and strength­en their com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is not im­mune to the crises in the glob­al econ­o­my, ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the per­ilous fi­nan­cial predica­ment left be­hind by the for­mer Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In the first quar­ter of 2026, re­al GDP con­tract­ed by 1.8 per cent when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2025. The en­er­gy sec­tor con­tract­ed by 2.8 per cent due large­ly to the de­clin­ing gas fields.

For the same pe­ri­od, the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor mar­gin­al­ly con­tract­ed by 0.7 per cent. How­ev­er, the non-en­er­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor grew by more than 11.6 per cent and the Food, Bev­er­age and To­bac­co sec­tor grew by 20.5 per cent.

In­fla­tion re­mains well con­tained in­to the first half of 2026, with head­line in­fla­tion at 0.6 per cent in Ju­ly 2026. Food in­fla­tion fell from 4.7 per cent in April 2025 to 1.7 per cent in Ju­ly 2026.

As at to­day, our Net Of­fi­cial Re­serves stands at US$5.4 bil­lion, equiv­a­lent to 6.2 months of im­port cov­er.

Over the last 18 months we had to bor­row over $21 bil­lion to re­fi­nance debts left by the PNM, with an­oth­er $70 bil­lion in debt due over the next 5 years.

But we are up to the task. As the re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­ket en­gage­ment and the re­ports of the rat­ing agen­cies demon­strate the glob­al in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty is com­fort­able that this Gov­ern­ment can and will meet its oblig­a­tions.

Labour Mar­ket De­vel­op­ments and De­mand

We have heard the dan­ger­ous claims re­peat­ed from the oth­er side that 60,000 peo­ple have lost their jobs un­der this Gov­ern­ment.

The facts tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

In the first quar­ter of 2026, 5,100 more per­sons were em­ployed com­pared to the first quar­ter of 2025, bring­ing the to­tal em­ployed to 564,000. The Labour Force Par­tic­i­pa­tion Rate al­so in­creased to 55.1 per cent, com­pared with 54.3 per cent un­der the PNM.

In­creas­es in So­cial Grants and Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion

We are a Gov­ern­ment that cares. The last time that the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion was in­creased was 12 years ago, un­der the then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

To­day, this Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment will in­crease the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Grant by $250 per month, putting more mon­ey in­to the pock­ets of 124,000 se­nior cit­i­zens.

The Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant will be in­creased by $250 in each tier ben­e­fit­ting 13,637 re­cip­i­ents.

The Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant for adults and el­i­gi­ble chil­dren will al­so be in­creased by $250. This is ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit 28,000 re­cip­i­ents.

These in­creas­es will put more mon­ey di­rect­ly in­to the hands of those who need it the most and will be ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

Promise made. Promise kept. More to come.

I turn now to the Medi­um-Term Eco­nom­ic Frame­work.

Medi­um-Term Eco­nom­ic Frame­work

We have al­ready com­menced ini­tia­tives to im­prove the frame­work for medi­um-term eco­nom­ic plan­ning and man­age­ment at our rev­enue col­lec­tion and cash man­age­ment agen­cies.

As part of this process, the Min­istry of Fi­nance will ex­plore the de­vel­op­ment of a Na­tion­al Fis­cal Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and Re­silience Frame­work and give se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to pub­li­ca­tion of an an­nu­al Fis­cal Strat­e­gy State­ment that sets out Gov­ern­ment’s medi­um-term fis­cal ob­jec­tives, the eco­nom­ic and fis­cal as­sump­tions un­der­pin­ning those ob­jec­tives, the ex­pect­ed path for rev­enue, ex­pen­di­ture, the fis­cal bal­ance and pub­lic debt, and the prin­ci­pal risks that could af­fect that out­look.

The in­ten­tion is not to im­pose rigid con­straints on the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to re­spond to chang­ing eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances. Rather, it is to strength­en trans­paren­cy, im­prove medi­um-term plan­ning and pro­vide the na­tion with a clear­er un­der­stand­ing of the di­rec­tion of fis­cal pol­i­cy and the ba­sis for Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sions.

The Gov­ern­ment will ex­am­ine the po­ten­tial for a set of un­der­ly­ing fis­cal prin­ci­ples and tools to help guide fis­cal pol­i­cy, strength­en ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­duce the ex­tent to which Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture is in­flu­enced by tem­po­rary fluc­tu­a­tions in en­er­gy rev­enues.

A Gov­ern­ment that Works for the Peo­ple

A com­pe­tent State re­quires strong in­sti­tu­tions, skilled pub­lic of­fi­cers, mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and clear ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Over the past 18 months, this Gov­ern­ment has be­gun re­build­ing that ca­pac­i­ty.

Build­ing a Mod­ern and Ef­fi­cient Trea­sury Di­vi­sion

The Trea­sury Di­vi­sion is re­spon­si­ble for Gov­ern­ment bank­ing op­er­a­tions, cash man­age­ment, pay­ment and re­ceipt arrange­ments as well as im­ple­ment­ing the leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work which gov­erns fi­nan­cial op­er­a­tions.

The for­mer Ad­min­is­tra­tion sab­o­taged these func­tions.

Through our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners we en­gaged a Pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment Spe­cial­ist to as­sess and un­der­take a com­pre­hen­sive process re-en­gi­neer­ing at the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion.

On the ba­sis of the con­sul­tant’s Re­port, Cab­i­net agreed to a phased Trea­sury Mod­erni­sa­tion Pro­gramme which we are now im­ple­ment­ing. The Trea­sury’s hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty was en­hanced by the pro­mo­tion and ap­point­ment of over 120 of­fi­cers.

This will im­prove the way the Trea­sury op­er­ates and fa­cil­i­tate the smooth im­ple­men­ta­tion of the In­te­grat­ed Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (IFMIS).

Over time, these re­forms will sup­port the con­sol­i­da­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s cash re­sources, re­duce re­liance on mul­ti­ple bank ac­counts, im­prove the time­li­ness and ac­cu­ra­cy of fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion, and pro­vide greater and re­al-time vis­i­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment’s cash po­si­tion. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

Re­build­ing the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion: Boost­ing Rev­enue Col­lec­tion, Im­prov­ing Ser­vice De­liv­ery

The for­mer Ad­min­is­tra­tion sab­o­taged the IRD cre­at­ing an an­nu­al $10 bil­lion tax gap which should have been col­lect­ed in rev­enue and could have pro­vid­ed sub­stan­tial fis­cal sur­plus to ben­e­fit the lives of cit­i­zens.

We are now re­build­ing the IRD. The ex­ist­ing es­tab­lish­ment has been strength­ened through the fill­ing of 136 va­can­cies with an ad­di­tion­al 102 Au­di­tors to be on­board­ed this month.

Fur­ther, 24 ICT pro­fes­sion­als will be tran­si­tioned to 3-year con­tracts and a fur­ther 27 ICT pro­fes­sion­als to be on­board­ed dur­ing fis­cal 2027.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, $113.4 mil­lion was ap­proved to up­grade the In­te­grat­ed Tax Pro­cess­ing Sys­tem from Ver­sion 9 to Ver­sion 26, sched­uled to be­gin in ear­ly-2027 and com­plet­ed with­in 18 months.

For tax­pay­ers, these up­grades mean more re­li­able on­line ser­vices, faster pro­cess­ing, im­proved ac­cess to ac­count in­for­ma­tion and few­er man­u­al trans­ac­tions. For the Gov­ern­ment, it will strength­en com­pli­ance, au­dit, da­ta analy­sis and rev­enue col­lec­tion.

We are en­hanc­ing the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion be­tween the In­te­grat­ed Tax Pro­cess­ing Sys­tem and the Cus­toms Bor­der Con­trol Sys­tem to im­prove trad­er ver­i­fi­ca­tion, cus­toms val­u­a­tion, com­pli­ance mon­i­tor­ing, au­dit, risk man­age­ment and in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

En­hanc­ing Bor­der Con­trol and Cus­toms Ad­min­is­tra­tion

I now turn to the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

Un­der the PNM, the CED was bur­dened with man­u­al process­es, lim­it­ed pay­ment op­tions, de­plet­ed hu­man re­sources, di­lap­i­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture and out­dat­ed ICT sys­tems.

To­day we are build­ing a mod­ernised and ad­e­quate­ly staffed, tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven CED.

Last year, I com­mit­ted to in­crease the staffing of the Di­vi­sion. To date we have on­board­ed 120 of­fi­cers at var­i­ous lev­els to sup­port sur­veil­lance, car­go ex­am­i­na­tion and bor­der en­force­ment.

The up­grade of ASY­CU­DA which com­menced in Oc­to­ber 2025 is ad­vanc­ing in part­ner­ship with UNC­TAD. This ini­tia­tive strength­ens risk man­age­ment and aligns with Gov­ern­ment’s over­ar­ch­ing dig­i­ti­za­tion frame­work. Com­ple­ment­ing this ini­tia­tive is the ASY­HUB Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem, which elec­tron­i­cal­ly con­nects Cus­toms with ship­ping agents, port op­er­a­tors and oth­er trad­ing part­ners.

To­geth­er, these sys­tems im­prove car­go vis­i­bil­i­ty, re­duce pro­cess­ing de­lays, and help po­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go as a more com­pet­i­tive and in­vest­ment-friend­ly trad­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

At the CES in Port of Spain, ex­ten­sive up­grade and re­fur­bish­ment works have been com­plet­ed and the fa­cil­i­ty is now ful­ly op­er­a­tional. Sim­i­lar up­grades at the Point Lisas CES are al­so near­ing com­ple­tion. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

Com­bat­ing Il­lic­it Trade

Il­lic­it trade dis­torts com­pe­ti­tion, places un­safe and coun­ter­feit goods in the hands of our cit­i­zens and de­prives the State of valu­able rev­enue.

That is why we re­vi­talised the An­ti-Il­lic­it Trade Task Force, com­bin­ing the pub­lic sec­tor, pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety un­der the joint lead­er­ship of the Min­istries re­spon­si­ble for Trade and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

Over the pe­ri­od June 2025 to Au­gust 2026 over 40,000 litres of il­le­gal al­co­hol, and over 920,000 packs of il­le­gal cig­a­rettes were seized by the CED.

In fis­cal 2027, we will ac­cel­er­ate these ac­tions, to com­bat il­lic­it trade, while mak­ing le­git­i­mate trade eas­i­er and more com­pet­i­tive.

These ini­tia­tives, in­clude a ref­er­ence pric­ing sys­tem for al­co­hol and to­bac­co to help the CED iden­ti­fy sus­pi­cious­ly un­der­val­ued ship­ments and bet­ter tar­get high-risk con­sign­ments.

We are im­ple­ment­ing the Cus­toms Recor­da­tion and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem to give cus­toms of­fi­cers ac­cess to ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion on rights hold­ers, au­tho­rised dis­trib­u­tors and ship­pers, and dis­tin­guish­ing prod­uct and pack­ag­ing fea­tures.

This will im­prove the de­tec­tion of coun­ter­feit goods while sup­port­ing more ef­fi­cient clear­ance of le­git­i­mate con­sign­ments.

We are al­so re­in­forc­ing co­or­di­na­tion and spe­cialised train­ing across the CED, the Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er en­force­ment agen­cies, while pur­su­ing greater re­gion­al in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing and track-and-trace arrange­ments through Cari­com.

Fis­cal Re­forms for Fair­er and More Eq­ui­table Tax Col­lec­tions

The fol­low­ing mea­sures were in­tro­duced in Bud­get 2026 and im­ple­ment­ed dur­ing the fis­cal year. The re­sults to date are as fol­lows:

The As­set Levy on Banks and In­sur­ance Com­pa­nies gen­er­at­ed $397 mil­lion.

The Land­lord Busi­ness Sur­charge re­sult­ed in the reg­is­tra­tion of 18,678 land­lords, gen­er­at­ing $48.4 mil­lion in reg­is­tra­tion fees and $85.6 mil­lion in land­lord sur­charge pay­ments.

The Elec­tric­i­ty Sur­charge on in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial con­sumers con­tributed $89.4 mil­lion in rev­enue.

The Club Gam­ing Tax rate ad­just­ment ap­plic­a­ble to liquor li­cence hold­ers gen­er­at­ed $65.2 mil­lion in new rev­enue col­lec­tions.

The in­crease in Cus­toms and Ex­cise Du­ties on Al­co­hol and Cig­a­rettes gen­er­at­ed $1.23 bil­lion in rev­enue.

The in­crease in oth­er Fees, Charges and Li­cences yield­ed $2 mil­lion in rev­enue.

The in­tro­duc­tion of MVT, VAT and Cus­toms Du­ties on lux­u­ry EVs gen­er­at­ed $15.5 mil­lion in rev­enue.

The in­tro­duc­tion of a Sin­gle Use Plas­tic Tax gen­er­at­ed $14.1 mil­lion in rev­enue.

Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme

In fis­cal 2026 we bud­get­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5 bil­lion in cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture, but spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3 bil­lion, though bills are still com­ing in.

Of course, this is con­cern­ing.

Ear­ly in the year we re­alised that the PSIP was con­strained by sig­nif­i­cant im­ped­i­ments that com­pro­mised ex­e­cu­tion.

This is a lega­cy prob­lem.

Cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture by a Gov­ern­ment is an im­por­tant en­gine of growth, and when projects are de­layed the ben­e­fits to cit­i­zens such as em­ploy­ment, eco­nom­ic stim­u­la­tion and the de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices re­main un­re­alised.

We un­der­took a re­view of the PSIP to de­ter­mine the fac­tors con­strain­ing its im­ple­men­ta­tion. That re­view iden­ti­fied pro­cure­ment as one of the ma­jor im­ped­i­ments to the time­ly ad­vance­ment and com­ple­tion of projects.

To ad­dress this, we amend­ed the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act to in­crease ap­proved pro­cure­ment lim­its and re­moved cer­tain en­ti­ties from the ap­pli­ca­tion of the Act.

Through these re­forms, we will be able to pro­vide bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture, stronger eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments in the lives of our cit­i­zens. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

Re­form­ing the VAT Sys­tem: Fair­er, Faster and More Ef­fi­cient

Un­der the last Ad­min­is­tra­tion, re­form was re­peat­ed­ly de­ferred, al­low­ing long stand­ing de­fi­cien­cies to deep­en, leav­ing busi­ness­es to car­ry the fi­nan­cial bur­den of years of in­ac­tion, with de­layed re­funds ty­ing up work­ing cap­i­tal, weak­en­ing cash­flow and con­strain­ing their abil­i­ty to in­vest, ex­pand and cre­ate jobs.

Last year, I sig­nalled our in­ten­tion to re­view the cur­rent VAT regime and, if fea­si­ble re­place it with a Sales Tax.

We en­gaged one of our in­ter­na­tion­al mul­ti­lat­er­al part­ners to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive di­ag­nos­tic re­view of the VAT sys­tem and as­sess the suit­abil­i­ty of a Sales Tax to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Re­view rec­om­mend­ed, that a re­formed and mod­ernised VAT sys­tem is the more ap­pro­pri­ate con­sump­tion tax for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

We have ac­cept­ed the key rec­om­men­da­tions of the Re­view and have al­ready start­ed the process of cor­rec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion to the VAT sys­tem.

One such rec­om­men­da­tion to re­duce the build-up of VAT, is the un-reg­is­tra­tion of Gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties that do not pro­duce tax­able out­puts.

Build­ing a Glob­al­ly Trust­ed Tax Sys­tem

In fis­cal 2026, the fol­low­ing mile­stones were ac­com­plished to­wards achiev­ing a more ro­bust, trans­par­ent and cred­i­ble tax frame­work:

MOUs were signed be­tween the FI­UTT and key State agen­cies. These arrange­ments pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of our fi­nan­cial sys­tem, strength­en in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing, en­hance reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight and pre­vent il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty;

Re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion was al­so ad­vanced through an Agree­ment with the Com­pli­ance Unit of the An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing Au­thor­i­ty of Bar­ba­dos;

The Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force, is eval­u­at­ing the coun­try’s ef­fec­tive­ness in com­ply­ing with the 40 Rec­om­men­da­tions of the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force. The process will con­clude with the adop­tion of the coun­try’s Mu­tu­al Eval­u­a­tion Re­port at the CFATF Ple­nary next month. This Mu­tu­al Eval­u­a­tion Re­port will iden­ti­fy Key Rec­om­mend­ed Ac­tions which will strength­en our in­sti­tu­tions, pro­tect our econ­o­my from il­lic­it fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty and re­in­force Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­mit­ment to meet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. These rec­om­men­da­tions will al­so guide fu­ture pol­i­cy, op­er­a­tional pri­or­i­ties and re­source al­lo­ca­tion across the na­tion­al An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing, Com­bat­ing the Fi­nanc­ing of Ter­ror­ism and Counter-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Fi­nanc­ing frame­work;

The Glob­al Fo­rum’s Sec­ond Round Peer Re­view un­der the Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion on Re­quest Stan­dard, was com­plet­ed. Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceived an over­all rat­ing of ‘Large­ly Com­pli­ant’;

The Peer Re­views for the 2025 BEPS Ac­tion 13 (Coun­try-by-Coun­try Re­port­ing) and the 2024 OECD BEPS Ac­tion 5 on Harm­ful Tax Prac­tices, were suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed re­quir­ing no change to our do­mes­tic le­gal and ad­min­is­tra­tive frame­work or the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion frame­work;

Im­proved the rat­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Au­to­mat­ic Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion le­gal frame­work un­der the OECD Com­mon Re­port­ing Stan­dard. The im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Au­to­mat­ic Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion Stan­dard was a crit­i­cal mile­stone to Trinidad and To­ba­go be­ing re­moved from the EU’s black­list;

The Glob­al Fo­rum adop­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Fol­low-Up Pre-Ex­change Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and Da­ta Safe­guards As­sess­ment Re­port con­firms that Trinidad and To­ba­go has im­ple­ment­ed the nec­es­sary con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and da­ta safe­guards re­quired un­der the Com­mon Re­port­ing Stan­dard frame­work; and

We are fi­nal­is­ing our po­si­tion with a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Mod­el Tax Con­ven­tion to avoid dou­ble tax­a­tion. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

Ad­vanc­ing the Trans­fer Pric­ing Regime

We have tak­en de­ci­sive steps to en­sure that multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions op­er­at­ing with­in our bor­ders con­tribute their fair share to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. As promised in Bud­get 2026, fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions with key stake­hold­ers and an in­ter­na­tion­al re­view, this Gov­ern­ment has com­plet­ed a draft na­tion­al pol­i­cy frame­work. We have now en­gaged the OECD to re­view and strength­en the draft pol­i­cy.

In this fis­cal year, pri­or­i­ty will be giv­en to fi­nal­is­ing the Trans­fer Pric­ing Pol­i­cy and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing pri­ma­ry leg­is­la­tion and to pre­pare for ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion.

By clos­ing the loop­holes in our tax sys­tem we will en­sure that we col­lect every dol­lar due to the State and put those dol­lars to work for all of our cit­i­zens. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

EX­IM­BANK: Ex­pand­ing Ex­ports and Sup­port­ing Pro­duc­tion through For­eign Ex­change Ac­cess

When this Ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice, we in­her­it­ed a for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion sys­tem that was rid­dled with cor­rup­tion, in­ef­fi­cien­cies, weak over­sight and un­fair prac­tices that of­ten left le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es strug­gling for ac­cess to much need­ed for­eign ex­change.

In less than 18 months, we trans­formed the EX­IM­BANK in­to a dis­ci­plined and eq­ui­table in­sti­tu­tion.

In the last year, we un­der­took a re­view of the EX­IM­BANK’s op­er­a­tions and poli­cies and iden­ti­fied as our first pri­or­i­ty, fair­ness in the al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change. To achieve this, we:

Re­vised the Bank’s al­lo­ca­tion frame­work to broad­en ac­cess for small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es and man­u­fac­tur­ers;

In­tro­duced a trans­par­ent el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria and stronger re­port­ing arrange­ments;

Ini­ti­at­ed a lim­it on al­lo­ca­tions to in­di­vid­ual en­ti­ties;

Im­ple­ment­ed a ded­i­cat­ed ac­cess for el­i­gi­ble SMEs; and most im­por­tant­ly

En­sured that greater con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en to busi­ness­es that ei­ther earned for­eign ex­change through ex­ports or re­duced the coun­try’s de­pen­den­cy on im­ports.

The re­sults are ev­i­dent.

Since May 2025, the EX­IM­BANK has dis­bursed US$555.7 mil­lion through its ded­i­cat­ed for­eign ex­change fa­cil­i­ties, with 43 per cent al­lo­cat­ed to small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

To en­sure that fair­ness in al­lo­ca­tion is bal­anced by in­tegri­ty in ver­i­fi­ca­tion, EX­IM­BANK has strength­ened its co­or­di­na­tion with the CED to iden­ti­fy ques­tion­able doc­u­men­ta­tion and dis­crep­an­cies, in­clud­ing fab­ri­cat­ed bills of lad­ing, in­flat­ed in­voic­es, goods rep­re­sent­ed as shipped when no ship­ment oc­curred, and in­con­sis­ten­cies be­tween de­clared val­ues and the un­der­ly­ing sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion. We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!

Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund (NIF)

In Bud­get 2026 I an­nounced a third tranche of the NIF bond as an­oth­er in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty for our peo­ple and means of fur­ther di­ver­si­fy­ing our fi­nan­cial mar­ket.

We have re­solved all of the ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues that de­ferred is­suance of the bond this year and I am pleased to an­nounce that NIF 3 will be launched in the com­ing months.

NIF 3 will pro­vide a safe and at­trac­tive in­vest­ment av­enue with healthy re­turns for the pub­lic and will gen­er­ate ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion in rev­enue.

Re-ig­nit­ing the En­er­gy Sec­tor: Pow­er­ing Growth

Nat­ur­al Gas

Our en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains the main pil­lar of our eco­nom­ic strength. It is the key in­gre­di­ent for our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion thrust. Over 70 per cent of our for­eign ex­change earn­ings come from the ex­port of en­er­gy com­modi­ties. It is this very in­come which fa­cil­i­tates the op­er­a­tions and de­vel­op­ment of our non-en­er­gy sec­tors.

For the PNM the en­tire en­er­gy sec­tor hinged on Drag­on Gas and de­spite mul­ti­ple ex­cur­sions to Venezuela, they came back with noth­ing.

It was those op­po­site who or­ches­trat­ed the pre­cip­i­tous col­lapse in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and con­se­quent­ly that of LNG and petro­chem­i­cals which the coun­try is grap­pling with to­day. Un­der this Prime Min­is­ter in 2014, nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion peaked at 4.4 bcf. But af­ter the decade of dec­i­ma­tion by the PNM, nat­ur­al gas sup­ply to­day, stands at a mea­gre 2.4 bcf.

This is a stag­ger­ing 45 per cent col­lapse in our nat­ur­al gas out­put, caus­ing the per­ma­nent clo­sure of At­lantic LNG Train 1 and sev­er­al oth­er petro­chem­i­cal plants. To­day the Point Lisas Es­tate is al­most a ghost town and even those plants still op­er­at­ing are pro­duc­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low ca­pac­i­ty. They have dev­as­tat­ed our en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty but we are fix­ing it.

Reignit­ing the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply was this UNC Gov­ern­ment’s first pri­or­i­ty. We im­me­di­ate­ly en­gaged all the ma­jor en­er­gy stake­hold­ers to re­vive growth of this vi­tal sec­tor. We were met with open and will­ing in­ter­ests. It re­al­ly begs the ques­tion, what were they do­ing?

In mere months, this Gov­ern­ment:

Es­tab­lished the En­er­gy Ac­cel­er­a­tor Hub with­in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries: to fast track all reg­u­la­to­ry, lo­gis­ti­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive ap­provals for ma­jor en­er­gy in­vest­ments to move from project con­cept to pro­duc­tion. This now brings un­der one um­brel­la in­sti­tu­tion, 33 sep­a­rate ap­provals across 8 Min­istries and agen­cies, re­duc­ing de­lays that com­pro­mised in­vest­ment and post­poned pro­duc­tion. In­de­pen­dent analy­sis shows that short­en­ing project time­lines by just 1 year can un­lock ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$120 mil­lion in val­ue. We promised, we de­liv­ered, more to come.

To date, new gas sup­plies have come from bpTT’s Cypre project. In ad­di­tion, the EOG-op­er­at­ed Men­to de­vel­op­ment project has achieved first gas, reach­ing peak pro­duc­tion of 281.58 mil­lion scf per day in June 2026.

The gas that those on the oth­er side could not find, is on its way in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture:

The bpTT Gin­ger is tar­get­ed to de­liv­er first gas in the first quar­ter of 2027, with pro­ject­ed peak pro­duc­tion of 335 mil­lion scf per day;

Ma­hogany A Ex­tend­ed Field will de­liv­er first gas in 2027 with an ex­pect­ed peak of 200 mil­lion scf per day;

Ju­niper Phase II will de­liv­er first gas in 2027 with peak pro­duc­tion at 272 mil­lion scf per day;

An­gelin Ex­tend­ed Field is cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing 127 mil­lion scf per day;

Man­akin-Co­quina will see fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion in No­vem­ber 2026;

Men­to Phase II is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce 225 mil­lion scf per day when it comes on stream;

Co­conut is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er first gas in 2027 with peak pro­duc­tion es­ti­mat­ed at 300 mil­lion scf per day;

Aphrodite is ex­pect­ed to come on stream in 2027 with a pro­duc­tion of 100 – 130 mil­lion scf per day; and

Man­a­tee Plus is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce first gas in late 2027 with peak pro­duc­tion of 600 mil­lion scf per day.

This is all in 2027. There are sev­er­al oth­er on­go­ing ini­tia­tives in the pipeline that will con­tribute ad­di­tion­al gas to the in­dus­try.

BpTT has se­cured an ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion li­cense for Lo­ran Phase II, which places this coun­try in a strate­gic po­si­tion to mon­e­tise po­ten­tial­ly more than 4 tril­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas from sev­er­al cross bor­der and re­gion­al fields us­ing the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture.

Fur­ther­more, bpTT has agreed to ac­quire Wood­side’s 70 per cent stake in the Ca­lyp­so Gas Field, giv­ing bpTT full con­trol of one of this coun­try’s largest un­de­vel­oped gas dis­cov­er­ies. This is ex­pect­ed to close by the end of 2026 and will sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­en the coun­try’s long-term gas sup­ply and ex­port out­look.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions are well ad­vanced with Shell and oth­er en­er­gy com­pa­nies for the fur­ther ex­ploita­tion of cross-bor­der and deep-wa­ter gas. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

In 2015, oil pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 78,683 bar­rels per day. Af­ter the decade of dec­i­ma­tion, oil pro­duc­tion has fall­en to 52,357 bar­rels per day in April 2025.

The on­ly thing we heard about oil from the PNM was the clo­sure of our re­fin­ery. With the stroke of a pen, they turned us in­to an im­port-de­pen­dent econ­o­my for the fu­el we need in our cars, fac­to­ries and kitchens.

With­in four months of as­sum­ing Of­fice, we se­cured a po­ten­tial in­vest­ment of US$21 bil­lion in oil ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion with Exxon­Mo­bil.

The Exxon­Mo­bil 3D seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion pro­gramme is now com­plet­ed and an analy­sis of the da­ta to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial drilling tar­gets with­in the ul­tra­deep-wa­ter block is at an ad­vanced stage. Not sur­pris­ing, we now have in­ter­est from oth­er ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing Chevron, Curlew Mid-stream, Oc­ci­den­tal Pe­tro­le­um. This fur­ther demon­strates re­newed con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy po­ten­tial.

Ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tors are once again in­vest­ing sub­stan­tial cap­i­tal to ex­plo­ration, de­vel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion ac­tiv­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Up­stream cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture is es­ti­mat­ed to ex­ceed US$2 bil­lion in 2026, with fur­ther in­vest­ments pro­ject­ed at US$2.3 bil­lion in 2027, US$2.6 bil­lion in 2028 and US$1.4 bil­lion in 2029. These in­vest­ments will sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of new oil and gas re­sources, ex­pand off­shore in­fra­struc­ture and op­ti­mise ma­ture pro­duc­ing as­sets.

We are al­so in­cen­tivis­ing small­er for­eign and lo­cal pri­vate op­er­a­tors to de­vel­op and mon­e­tize our mar­gin­al oil re­serves. In ad­di­tion, we are mak­ing di­rect in­vest­ment through Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed which is ex­e­cut­ing a drilling and workover pro­gramme across pro­duc­ing fields, in­clud­ing East Sol­da­do and South West Sol­da­do.

We can­not speak about en­er­gy with­out speak­ing about the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery. This is more than just re­viv­ing a dor­mant in­dus­tri­al as­set to pro­tect our fu­el se­cu­ri­ty. This is about re­in­stat­ing the very life­line to com­mu­ni­ties, down­stream con­trac­tors, mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es, dou­bles ven­dors, roti shops, etc.

Thou­sands of res­i­dents in com­mu­ni­ties from Cou­va to Ce­dros were sud­den­ly left trau­ma­tized by a loss of in­come to meet the needs of their fam­i­ly since 2018.

We went with a stroke of a PNM pen from be­ing a net ex­porter of re­fined prod­ucts to hav­ing to im­port every sin­gle litre of diesel, of gaso­line, of pitch oil and of en­gine oil used in this coun­try.

We will restart the re­fin­ery. We are ad­vanc­ing the phased restart of the Guaracara Re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre. Fol­low­ing re­ceipt of the Com­pre­hen­sive Re­port of the Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee, Gov­ern­ment is eval­u­at­ing pro­pos­als from a short­list of se­ri­ous lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors. Let me be clear, we will ap­proach the restart of this na­tion­al as­set with fis­cal dis­ci­pline. Our ob­jec­tive is to se­cure a cred­i­ble, com­mer­cial­ly vi­able and ful­ly fi­nanced arrange­ment that pro­tects the na­tion­al in­ter­est while cre­at­ing the con­di­tions for re­newed eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

We will re­turn eco­nom­ic mo­men­tum and re­tore con­fi­dence in many com­mu­ni­ties linked to the re­fin­ery and de­pen­dent on the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The Min­is­ters of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries will pro­vide fur­ther de­tails of the sub­stan­tial oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties in this sec­tor which promis­es to re­vi­talise the in­dus­try and in­crease con­tri­bu­tions to Trinidad and To­ba­go rev­enue stream.

Wage Ne­go­ti­a­tions

I re­port next on the progress made by this UNC Gov­ern­ment on ful­fill­ing our promise to pub­lic ser­vants.

De­spite try­ing fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances, in De­cem­ber 2025, the UNC Gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed for a par­tial cash pay­ment of $230 mil­lion to PSA mem­bers.

In 2027 and based on the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s pro­pos­al to pay 40 per cent of out­stand­ing ar­rears in cash, we have an al­lo­ca­tion in fis­cal 2027 to meet this oblig­a­tion.

We have al­so al­lo­cat­ed:

* $252 mil­lion for NUGFW new wage rates and CO­LA and $510 mil­lion for ar­rears;

* $44.9 mil­lion for ar­rears for Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion;

* $45.4 mil­lion for ar­rears for San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion; and

* $281.8 mil­lion for ar­rears for the De­fence Force.

* This rep­re­sents close to $2.5 bil­lion which we are putting in the hands of cur­rent and re­tired pub­lic of­fi­cers.

This Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment did more for the Work­ers’ Agen­da in 18 months than the PNM did in 10 years.

We in­tend to con­tin­ue en­gag­ing with trade unions with un­re­solved ne­go­ti­a­tions in­clud­ing: the OW­TU, the TI­WU, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Work­ers’ Union and Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union rep­re­sent­ing work­ers at T&TEC, UWI, UTT, NP, Nat­Pet, the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency, Na­tion­al Quar­ries, YTEPP, Na­tion­al He­li­copters, MTS, PTSC, TTPost and LATT.

Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Ac­ci­dent Fund

In 2015, the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment ap­proved the es­tab­lish­ment of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Ac­ci­dent Vic­tims’ Fund, with an ini­tial cap­i­tal in­jec­tion of $20 mil­lion.

The pur­pose was to pro­vide fi­nan­cial re­dress to el­i­gi­ble vic­tims who suf­fer se­ri­ous in­jury, and to the fam­i­lies of per­sons who lose their lives due to ac­ci­dents caused by unin­sured or un­traced dri­vers.

For ten years un­der the PNM, the Fund re­mained non-op­er­a­tional dur­ing which time, cit­i­zens were un­able to ap­peal to this Fund for fi­nan­cial re­dress.

It took a UNC Gov­ern­ment to right this wrong. We have con­sti­tut­ed the Com­mit­tee to es­tab­lish the nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive frame­work to op­er­a­tionalise the Fund. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

Ac­cel­er­at­ing Dig­i­tal Ser­vices: Bring­ing Gov­ern­ment Clos­er to the Peo­ple

Ac­cel­er­at­ing dig­i­tal ser­vices is key to im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy. Our dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion agen­da will im­prove ser­vice de­liv­ery, strength­en in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ty, and build greater na­tion­al re­silience.

Al­ready, un­der the new Ver­i­fyTT ini­tia­tive, 803 dig­i­tal cre­den­tials were is­sued, 55,927 cre­den­tials were up­loaded to the plat­form, and 387 ver­i­fi­ca­tion trans­ac­tions were com­plet­ed. Ver­i­fyTT has been in­te­grat­ed with Em­ployTT and the new­ly es­tab­lished LearnTT.

This dig­i­tal eco-sys­tem en­ables cit­i­zens to se­cure­ly store and share trust­ed dig­i­tal cre­den­tials while al­low­ing em­ploy­ers, ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies to in­stant­ly ver­i­fy their au­then­tic­i­ty re­duc­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­cess­ing times and min­imis­ing doc­u­ment fraud.

The TATT, has de­ployed 32 TTWiFi sites at schools and hos­pi­tals and dis­trib­uted more than 300 de­vices to per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. We have al­so com­plet­ed the Rox­bor­ough AI Cen­tre in To­ba­go and the In­di­an Trail AI Cen­tre, along­side sup­port for dig­i­tal train­ing ini­tia­tives such as ICT4Se­niors and Tech4Girls.

Our next phase in­cludes the de­vel­op­ment of the:

* Na­tion­al Cit­i­zen Ser­vices Plat­form;

* CARE-TT so­cial ben­e­fits wal­let; and

* Ben­e­fiTT, to mod­ernise the way cit­i­zens ac­cess so­cial ben­e­fits.

* Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

My col­league, the Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices will share de­tails on these ini­tia­tives.

In Feb­ru­ary 2026, we launched the Na­tion­al AI Acad­e­my. We are well ad­vanced in mod­ernising the Elec­tron­ic Trans­ac­tions Act and the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act and in fis­cal 2027 we will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op CodeTT as a foun­da­tion for build­ing lo­cal dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ty and fos­ter­ing home-grown in­no­va­tion.

The Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence will ex­pand on these and oth­er ini­tia­tives un­der his purview dur­ing the de­bate.

The world is rac­ing at an ex­po­nen­tial rate to­wards dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. This UNC Gov­ern­ment is putting in place the nec­es­sary ini­tia­tives to en­sure that Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains cur­rent. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come

Glob­al Part­ner­ships: Open­ing Doors to New In­vest­ments and Op­por­tu­ni­ties

Through a re­newed and more as­sertive ap­proach to in­ter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy, we are strength­en­ing re­la­tion­ships with key part­ners and trans­lat­ing those re­la­tion­ships in­to op­por­tu­ni­ties that sup­port eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer and sus­tain­able growth.

Our en­gage­ment with the Unit­ed States, In­dia, Venezuela, Japan, Ghana and oth­er strate­gic economies has in­ten­si­fied at the high­est lev­el mov­ing be­yond di­a­logue to im­ple­men­ta­tion. We are en­gaged in bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion to­wards ex­pand­ing trade, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, food se­cu­ri­ty, steel man­u­fac­tur­ing among so many oth­ers. We are laser-fo­cused on at­tract­ing for­eign-di­rect in­vest­ment, strength­en­ing sup­ply chains, lo­gis­tics and in­fra­struc­ture all aimed at reignit­ing growth and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able and fu­ture-ready em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for our peo­ple.

My col­league the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs will pro­vide greater de­tail on these and oth­er de­vel­op­ments.

Build­ing for Growth: In­vest­ing in Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture

Health­care: World-class Fa­cil­i­ties for Every Cit­i­zen

Un­der the PNM, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $80 mil­lion in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and med­ical sup­plies were al­lowed to ex­pire. Think of the can­cer, di­a­betes and heart pa­tients who could have ben­e­fit­ed. In­stead, many had to make the sac­ri­fices to buy these drugs or do with­out.

The truth is we in­her­it­ed a health care sys­tem on a ven­ti­la­tor.

We have start­ed the re­sus­ci­ta­tion process.

With the recom­mis­sion­ing of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, and the near-com­ple­tion of the new Cen­tral Block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, we ex­pect a sig­nif­i­cant cut in wait­ing times for pa­tients in need of life-sav­ing surg­eries, and we are ex­pand­ing the Car­diac Catheter­i­sa­tion Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex to fa­cil­i­tate quick­er di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease.

Fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s in­struc­tions, we have amend­ed the Chil­dren’s Life Fund Act to al­low in­ter­na­tion­al med­ical spe­cial­ists to work along­side our lo­cal med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to treat crit­i­cal­ly ill chil­dren.

We are al­so mak­ing med­i­cine more af­ford­able by ap­prov­ing new phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts for lo­cal use and by adopt­ing the In­di­an Phar­ma­copoeia, which will help re­duce the cost of med­ica­tion for cit­i­zens.

My col­leagues in the Min­istry of Health will pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on the achieve­ments of this sec­tor.

I now turn to in­fra­struc­ture.

Roads In­vest­ments for Re­duced Con­ges­tion and Im­proved Com­merce

Be­tween 2010-2015, this Prime Min­is­ter in­vest­ed in an ex­ten­sive pro­gramme of high­way ex­pan­sion to cre­ate a trans­porta­tion net­work re­quired to open up eco­nom­ic spaces and pro­mote lo­calised eco­nom­ic zones in­clud­ing tourism hubs and re­tail cen­tres.

Those op­po­site sab­o­taged the high­way pro­gramme. For 10 years, the PNM could not even fix the crack in the Creek. We have fixed it.

The high­way to Point Fortin, Fyz­abad and San Fran­cique aban­doned. The high­ways to Princes Town and Ma­yaro dis­card­ed. We will fix it.

Every dri­ver and pas­sen­ger know of the abysmal state of the roads left by the Pot­hole Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Dur­ing fis­cal 2026, the High­ways Di­vi­sion re­paired 7,800 pot­holes and over 1,000 de­fects as­so­ci­at­ed with WASA works, and 752 road de­pres­sions.

In fis­cal 2027, we will con­tin­ue the Na­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Restora­tion of Roads Pro­gramme, with an ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tion of $15 mil­lion for re­pairs through­out the road net­work.

We are ad­vanc­ing the Ch­agua­nas Ring Road, with an ini­tial al­lo­ca­tion of $20.0 mil­lion for sur­veys, traf­fic stud­ies, ge­ot­ech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions, en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial as­sess­ments and de­sign re­view in fis­cal 2027.

Our ap­proach re­flects a clear and sus­tained com­mit­ment to main­tain what we have, com­plete what was start­ed, re­pair what has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and in­vest strate­gi­cal­ly in the in­fra­struc­ture our coun­try will need for the fu­ture.

Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print: Eco­nom­ic Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion

The Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print was launched in No­vem­ber 2025 by the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and is this coun­try’s largest in­fra­struc­ture un­der­tak­ing.

The Blue­print brings to­geth­er a sin­gle phased im­ple­men­ta­tion pro­gramme, to con­vert na­tion­al as­sets and un­der­utilised spaces in­to pro­duc­tive cen­tres of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, pub­lic ser­vice and com­mu­ni­ty life. Em­ploy­ment un­der this Pro­gramme is pro­ject­ed to av­er­age close to 51,000 jobs an­nu­al­ly, ris­ing to a peak of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 72,000 jobs in 2028. Op­por­tu­ni­ties for en­gi­neers, trades­men, struc­tur­al steel work­ers, road pavers and trans­port providers will be­come avail­able.

The Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture will pro­vide fur­ther de­tails.

Road Safe­ty and Ef­fi­cien­cy Mea­sures

To pro­mote safe­ty of the trav­el­ling pop­u­la­tion, we im­ple­ment­ed mod­ernised mea­sures over the last year. These in­clude the in­stal­la­tion of a mod­ern Re­versible Lane Con­trol Sys­tem to mit­i­gate traf­fic con­ges­tion along the East­ern Main Road be­tween St Joseph and Mt Lam­bert.

We in­tro­duced 15 sig­nal-con­trolled in­ter­sec­tions across Port-of-Spain and 20 new speed-mea­sur­ing de­vices to im­prove road safe­ty en­force­ment.

This was sup­port­ed by in­creas­es in fixed penal­ties for a range of road traf­fic vi­o­la­tions which I an­nounced in Bud­get 2026. Though un­pop­u­lar this was a nec­es­sary de­ci­sion. It was nev­er about rais­ing rev­enue. It was al­ways about sav­ing lives. The re­sults speak for them­selves.

Road fa­tal­i­ties have de­clined by 31 per cent, se­ri­ous in­juries by 35 per cent and mi­nor in­juries by 33 per cent. In just 1 year, this UNC Gov­ern­ment achieved a stag­ger­ing 42 per cent de­crease in traf­fic in­ci­dents com­pared to fis­cal 2025.

Strength­en­ing Avi­a­tion and Re­gion­al Con­nec­tiv­i­ty

When we left Gov­ern­ment in 2015, Trinidad and To­ba­go was well on its way to be­ing the avi­a­tion hub of this re­gion.

Dur­ing the decade of dec­i­ma­tion, our avi­a­tion in­dus­try be­came a shell of what it was: 6 air­lines ceased com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions to Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing Fron­tier Air­lines, LI­AT, Suri­name Air­ways, Vir­gin At­lantic and West Jet.

We have re­versed that trend. WINAIR and In­ter­Caribbean Air­ways start­ed serv­ing pas­sen­gers in Feb­ru­ary and March of this year. Con­tour Air­lines launched flights from Do­mini­ca this month and Suri­name Air­ways will re­sume ser­vice in No­vem­ber.

We have signed Air Ser­vices Agree­ments with Chile, Ghana, Pana­ma, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Rwan­da and are fi­nal­is­ing agree­ments to bring on new routes with Brazil and Co­lum­bia.

Im­proved re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty means more pas­sen­gers through our air­ports, more op­por­tu­ni­ties for tourism and car­go, greater de­mand for avi­a­tion and sup­port ser­vices, and ul­ti­mate­ly, more busi­ness, in­vest­ments and jobs for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion will give fur­ther de­tails.

Ex­pand­ing Ac­cess to Re­li­able Pub­lic Util­i­ty Ser­vices

I now turn to pub­lic util­i­ties to give a brief ac­count which will be sub­stan­tive­ly sup­ple­ment­ed by my col­leagues in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties lat­er on in the de­bate.

Wa­ter

We in­her­it­ed age­ing pipelines, in­ter­mit­tent sched­ules and com­mu­ni­ties still wait­ing for a de­pend­able pipe-borne sup­ply.

In fis­cal 2026 we de­liv­ered:

* 12 new and re­fur­bished pipeline projects, more than 21 kilo­me­tres of mains and im­proved ser­vice for 66,842 per­sons;

* New pro­duc­tion wells at Cara­pal, Chatham and St Ann’s strength­ened wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty for 24,064 per­sons;

* Freeport and Mar­aval Wa­ter Treat­ment Plants were up­grad­ed, crit­i­cal equip­ment at Tyri­co was re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed, and 4 boost­er sta­tions were im­proved across north, south and south-west Trinidad;

* 7 tank farms were com­mis­sioned. Across the wider stor­age pro­gramme, more than 9,375 house­holds are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from greater re­silience dur­ing sup­ply in­ter­rup­tions;

* WASA re­paired 11,835 leaks be­tween Jan­u­ary and May 2026;

* In To­ba­go, re­fur­bish­ment of 2 boost­ers at Bloody Bay were up­grad­ed, while fur­ther Re­fur­bish­ment of the Hills­bor­ough Dam spill­way pro­gressed for the ben­e­fit of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15,000 res­i­dents;

* Waste­water in­fra­struc­ture al­so ad­vanced. Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Beetham Waste­water Treat­ment Plant will strength­en a sys­tem serv­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 302,000 per­sons; and

* We are ad­vanc­ing 3 pro­posed de­sali­na­tion plants at Ma­yaro, Morne Di­a­blo and To­ba­go.

Elec­tric­i­ty

In fis­cal 2026, we spent $23.3 mil­lion for elec­tric­i­ty ini­tia­tives. We:

* In­stalled 254 LED street­lights;

* Il­lu­mi­nat­ed 8 parks and recre­ation­al grounds and 3 pub­lic spaces;

*Com­plet­ed 23,222 street-light re­pairs;

* Re­placed 2,252 LED along the na­tion’s high­ways;

* Com­plet­ed 7 elec­tri­fi­ca­tion projects;

* Con­nect­ed 17,660 new cus­tomers;

* Un­der­took grid re­silience and trans­former works at 7 lo­ca­tions; and

Tar­get­ed as­sis­tance

More than 13,000 per­sons re­ceived sup­port un­der the Util­i­ties As­sis­tance Pro­gramme be­tween May 2025 and June 2026.

This pro­gramme as­sists with util­i­ty bills, wa­ter tanks, so­lar pan­els for low-in­come house­holds be­yond the eco­nom­ic reach of the elec­tric­i­ty grid.

Un­der the 35 per cent Re­bate Pro­gramme, 137,378 cus­tomers re­ceived as­sis­tance be­tween May 2025 and June 2026. For fis­cal 2027, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $60 mil­lion is pro­posed to con­tin­ue this sup­port.

Promise made. Promise kept. More to come!

Build­ing Re­silience through Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Flood Mit­i­ga­tion

Over the past year, we ad­vanced sev­er­al crit­i­cal Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Flood Mit­i­ga­tion Projects:

• 51 projects for de­silt­ing, dredg­ing and drainage clear­ance works;

• 90,000 sand­bags were dis­trib­uted through the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions;

• 6,000 Com­mu­ni­ty Emer­gency Re­sponse Team vol­un­teers were trained to strength­en dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness in com­mu­ni­ties;

* The Com­mu­ni­ty Flood Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem was en­hanced to give ear­li­er warn­ing sig­nals to at-risk com­mu­ni­ties; and

• ODPM and DMUs at the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions ben­e­fit­ed from in­creased emer­gency shel­ter sup­plies and spe­cialised res­cue equip­ment.

We will deep­en this pre­ven­ta­tive ap­proach in fis­cal year 2027, through an al­lo­ca­tion of $30 mil­lion to the Flood Mit­i­ga­tion and Ero­sion Con­trol Pro­gramme. This will ad­vance new projects along crit­i­cal wa­ter­cours­es through­out Trinidad, and progress the next phase of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and oth­er in­ter­ven­tions aimed at re­duc­ing flood­ing and ero­sion in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces (NPUPS)

We recog­nise that the up­keep of our pub­lic spaces is a se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the State.

This Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished the Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces and ini­ti­at­ed a pi­lot project in fis­cal 2026. This cre­at­ed 2,900 re­al jobs.

In fis­cal 2027, we will ex­pand this Pro­gramme.

The Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide de­tails on this and oth­er ini­tia­tives.

Eco­nom­ic Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion: Build­ing Long Term Eco­nom­ic Re­silience

We on this side, un­der­stand that oil and gas are non re­new­able re­sources.

In fis­cal 2027, we will con­tin­ue our ac­cel­er­at­ed thrust to­ward ex­pand­ing agri­cul­ture, man­u­fac­tur­ing, tourism, and tech­nol­o­gy-based in­dus­tries.

Agri­cul­ture and Food Se­cu­ri­ty

We have ad­vanced a se­ries of strate­gic ini­tia­tives de­signed to in­crease do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, strength­en agro-pro­cess­ing, en­cour­age val­ue-added pro­duc­tion and im­prove the com­pet­i­tive­ness of our farm­ers and agro­proces­sors.

In ad­di­tion to the achieve­ments al­ready men­tioned, there have been im­mense rev­o­lu­tions in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor over the past 18 months.

I will iden­ti­fy fur­ther ini­tia­tives lat­er in my pre­sen­ta­tion.

The Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture to pro­vide greater de­tails on how we are build­ing ca­pac­i­ty here at home, to strength­en the re­silience of our food sup­ply, re­duce our food im­port bill, and cre­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment.

Strength­en­ing Trade and In­vest­ment: Pro­duc­ing More, Ex­port­ing More

Mr. Speak­er, im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness is a key pri­or­i­ty for this Gov­ern­ment, as it is vi­tal to im­prov­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ef­fi­cien­cy and com­pet­i­tive­ness.

In Fis­cal 2027, will con­tin­ue to roll out our Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness Re­form Agen­da and ex­pand TTBi­zLink part­ner­ship with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Our suc­cess­ful ini­tia­tives over the past fis­cal year are tes­ta­ment to our com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing our man­u­fac­tur­ers, trad­ing part­ners and en­tre­pre­neurs.

Non-en­er­gy Man­u­fac­tur­ing

In Bud­get 2026 we set a tar­get to gen­er­ate an ad­di­tion­al US$2 bil­lion in non-en­er­gy ex­ports by 2027 and US$5 bil­lion by 2030 and there are al­ready en­cour­ag­ing signs of mo­men­tum which are al­ready yield­ing re­sults.

Non-en­er­gy ex­ports in­creased to US$7.16 bil­lion Jan­u­ary to June 2026 com­pared to US$6.46 bil­lion dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025 re­flect­ing an up­surge of US$696.38 mil­lion.

Steel and Vana­di­um

Af­ter a decade of ex­ile un­der the PNM the UNC has brought steel back to Point Lisas. Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion and its lo­cal sub­sidiary, Ibis Steel, are mak­ing an ini­tial in­vest­ment of US$250 mil­lion to com­mence the re­fur­bish­ment of the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal plant.

An ad­di­tion­al US$750 mil­lion will fol­low.

First pro­duc­tion is tar­get­ed for the end of 2027.

This mile­stone project will po­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go as a key mem­ber of a west­ern crit­i­cal sup­ply chain, pro­vid­ing vana­di­um, a strate­gic met­al used in ad­vanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, aero­space and bat­tery tech­nolo­gies, open­ing the doors to de­vel­op a tech­no­log­i­cal in­dus­tri­al fron­tier for our econ­o­my.

As we bring a ma­jor idle in­dus­tri­al as­set back in­to pro­duc­tive life, 1,000 new per­ma­nent skilled jobs are ex­pect­ed to be cre­at­ed.

Af­ter a decade of PNM stag­na­tion; T&T is once again open for busi­ness!

We have 45 po­ten­tial projects val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$2.17 bil­lion in our in­vest­ment pipeline at var­i­ous stages of readi­ness.

These projects have the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate over 7,100 new jobs, while strength­en­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and fu­ture for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

We are well on our way to achiev­ing our in­vest­ment tar­get of US$9 bil­lion by 2030.

Tourism: Trinidad and To­ba­go, a Des­ti­na­tion for Vis­i­tors, In­vest­ment and Growth

Our tar­get for the tourism sec­tor is to in­crease its con­tri­bu­tion to GDP from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6 per­cent to 12 per­cent by 2030.

To achieve this, we are mov­ing be­yond the tun­nel vi­sion of those on the oth­er side who fo­cused on­ly on vis­i­tor ar­rivals by plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on vis­i­tor val­ue, in­vest­ment, em­ploy­ment, for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion, and na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Fol­low­ing a com­pre­hen­sive Tourism Sec­tor Re-think, 6 pri­or­i­ty growth seg­ments have been iden­ti­fied:

• En­ter­tain­ment and Cul­ture Tourism;

• Eco-Tourism;

• Busi­ness Tourism;

• Health and Med­ical Tourism;

• Sports Tourism; and

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• Yacht­ing Tourism.

Each of which is be­ing de­vel­oped as dis­tinct eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.

In fis­cal 2027, we will launch the Sail­Clear ar­rival and de­par­ture dig­i­tal clear­ance sys­tem, re­duc­ing yacht pro­cess­ing times from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4 hours to 15 min­utes. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a Port Health Of­fice has been es­tab­lished in Ch­aguara­mas, re­duc­ing health clear­ance from 2 days to less than 2 min­utes.

As we ex­pand ac­cess to Trinidad and To­ba­go, we must ex­pand our ac­com­mo­da­tion ca­pac­i­ty to keep pace with the growth we are pro­ject­ing. I am pleased to re­port that in­vestor in­ter­est in build­ing room stock for our tourism sec­tor is strong.

A 100-room Hamp­ton by Hilton at Pi­ar­co, is set to open in March 2027, and a 109-room Hilton Gar­den Inn at South Park, San Fer­nan­do, is tar­get­ed for com­ple­tion by March 2028.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, to­mor­row the Prime Min­is­ter will turn the sod to start con­struc­tion of the Mar­riott-brand­ed 200room Ho­tel and Re­sort at Rocky Point, Mount Irvine, To­ba­go.

These in­vest­ments will cre­ate hun­dreds of jobs dur­ing both con­struc­tion and op­er­a­tions and gen­er­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal sup­pli­ers, con­trac­tors and small busi­ness­es.

• We will con­tin­ue to build our tourism sec­tor,

• to make it more com­pet­i­tive and re­silient;

• cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es,

• at­tract­ing in­vest­ment,

• earn­ing for­eign ex­change

• and de­liv­er­ing last­ing eco­nom­ic val­ue to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

My col­leagues at the helm of the Min­istry of Trade, In­dus­try and Tourism will share more on these and oth­er

ini­tia­tives.

Pro­tect­ing our Chil­dren and the Vul­ner­a­ble Re­duc­ing Child Pover­ty: In­vest­ing in Our Na­tion’s

Fu­ture

In 2025, a UNICEF Study on Child Pover­ty re­vealed that 1 in 3 chil­dren in Trinidad and To­ba­go live in mul­ti­di­men­sion­al pover­ty.

These are chil­dren go­ing to school hun­gry or falling be­hind in school be­cause their par­ents can­not af­ford to meet their ba­sic needs. Pover­ty in child­hood does not re­main in child­hood. Its ef­fects can fol­low a per­son through­out life. We are fix­ing this. An in­vest­ment in our chil­dren is an in­vest­ment in our fu­ture.

Our Child Pover­ty Re­duc­tion Strat­e­gy brings stake­hold­ers to­geth­er en­sur­ing that as­sis­tance reach­es those most in need.

Among the mea­sures be­ing con­sid­ered are:

• stronger sup­port dur­ing the ear­li­est years of a child’s life;

• strength­ened school nu­tri­tion;

• wider ac­cess to Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion;

• ear­li­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of de­vel­op­men­tal needs;

• bet­ter ac­cess to wa­ter for vul­ner­a­ble house­holds; and

• im­proved shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion across Gov­ern­ment so that chil­dren in need do not dis­ap­pear be­tween

the gaps of dif­fer­ent agen­cies.

We are al­so ex­am­in­ing pro­pos­als for ad­di­tion­al sup­port to fam­i­lies with new-born chil­dren, be­cause we recog­nise that the first years of life are among the most im­por­tant in de­ter­min­ing a child’s fu­ture.

Whether a child is born in Ran­cho Que­ma­do or Tal­paro, Moru­ga or Ma­yaro, San­gre Grande, To­ba­go or any­where else, he or she must know that this coun­try sees them, val­ues them and is pre­pared to in­vest in their fu­ture.

We can­not promise that pover­ty will dis­ap­pear overnight. But we can promise that it will no longer be treat­ed as some­body else’s prob­lem.

Above all, we can give our chil­dren some­thing that pover­ty too of­ten takes away, hope.

So­cial In­vest­ment for our Vul­ner­a­ble

Mr. Speak­er, there are those who ar­gue that gov­ern­ment’s large al­lo­ca­tion to trans­fers and sub­si­dies must be sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced.

We must re­turn growth to this econ­o­my and de­vel­op the pro­duc­tive sec­tors to gen­er­ate sus­tain­able jobs at every

stra­tum of our so­ci­ety. But we must al­so pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble.

Mr. Speak­er, in fis­cal 2026:

• Un­der the Se­nior Cit­i­zens Grant over $4.2 bil­lion was spent to sup­port 123,393 pen­sion­ers;

• Un­der the Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant over $233 mil­lion was spent to sup­port 15,525 per­sons;

• Un­der the Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant over $569 mil­lion was spent to sup­port 27,071 per­sons;

• Un­der the Food Sup­port Pro­gramme over $102 mil­lion was spent to sup­port 37,066 house­holds;

• Un­der the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance

Pro­gramme 124,945 cit­i­zens re­ceived es­sen­tial pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tion, val­ued at $35.6 mil­lion;

• Over $171 mil­lion was spent on sub­sidised PTSC ser­vices, sup­port­ing more than 3.47 mil­lion

pas­sen­ger trips; and

• $53.0 mil­lion was spent on sub­sidised Wa­ter Taxi Ser­vice for over 423,000 pas­sen­ger jour­neys.

These so­cial in­ter­ven­tions rep­re­sent­ed an ex­pen­di­ture of more than $5.3 bil­lion to en­sure that pen­sion­ers,

fam­i­lies, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, pa­tients and those de­pen­dent on pub­lic trans­porta­tion re­ceive the sup­port

they need to live with greater fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty.

My col­leagues with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for So­cial Ser­vices will speak more on this.

Fu­el Sub­sidy

In Bud­get 2026, to pro­tect the pur­chas­ing pow­er of cit­i­zens, we re­duced the price of su­per gaso­line by

$TT1.00 per litre.

This de­ci­sion put im­me­di­ate sav­ings di­rect­ly in­to the pock­ets of mo­torists and fam­i­lies.

It is now com­mon knowl­edge that in­ter­na­tion­al fu­el prices rose dras­ti­cal­ly dur­ing fis­cal 2026.

We could have re­vis­it­ed the sub­sidy on su­per gaso­line, but in­stead this car­ing Gov­ern­ment chose to ab­sorb the in­creased cost rather than pass it on to our cit­i­zens and en­sured that trans­porta­tion costs did not fu­el in­fla­tion.

This cost the Gov­ern­ment $290 mil­lion dur­ing the fis­cal year.

Had we not done so the av­er­age price per litre for the pe­ri­od March to Sep­tem­ber 2026, would have been $7.64 in­stead of $5.97 per litre that cit­i­zens pay now.

Sim­ply put Mr. Speak­er, a dri­ver who filled their 50-litre gas tank 4 times a month with su­per gaso­line dur­ing the past year, saved $332 per month or $3,984 for the year!

I don’t have to re­mind this Ho­n­ourable House of the PNM’s ap­proach to gas sub­sidy when they raised the price of gas over and over and over and sneered “They eh ri­ot yet!”

To­day the cost of su­per gaso­line on the world mar­ket is $8.72 per litre.

Those op­po­site would have been rais­ing the price to you again.

This Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment has

Hous­ing and Home­own­er­ship

Re­vi­tal­is­ing the hous­ing sec­tor is a crit­i­cal as­pect of this Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s wider strat­e­gy for ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty and re­build­ing the econ­o­my.

While the pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive is to con­struct af­ford­able homes, this al­so sup­ports sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties to

• stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,

• cre­ate em­ploy­ment, in­crease de­mand for lo­cal build­ing ma­te­ri­als

• and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, sup­port small con­trac­tors and con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of new com­mu­ni­ties.

Fis­cal 2027 will see in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty in the home con­struc­tion sec­tor via a com­bi­na­tion of Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships and State fund­ed projects.

The Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Hous­ing will say more on this.

Sport and Youth: In­spir­ing Ex­cel­lence, Build­ing In­dus­try

Over the past year, our ath­letes have once again car­ried the Red, White and Black with dis­tinc­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the 2025 World Ath­let­ics Cham­pi­onships in Tokyo, the 2025 Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games and the 2026 Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games.

As a sports fan and pa­tri­ot, I am pleased to be­long to an ad­min­is­tra­tion that is deeply pas­sion­ate about sup­port­ing our ath­letes, and fa­cil­i­tat­ing the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal tal­ent.

Dur­ing our last term in Gov­ern­ment, we con­struct­ed the world-class sport­ing in­fra­struc­ture nec­es­sary to piv­ot Trinidad and To­ba­go as a sport tourism des­ti­na­tion.

In the past 10 years, those on the oth­er side al­lowed bil­lions of dol­lars in pro­duc­tive in­vest­ment to rot.

But we are fix­ing it.

Over the past year, 11 re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing events were host­ed in our sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties and we wel­comed over 842 for­eign ath­letes and their ac­com­pa­ny­ing sup­port staff and fam­i­lies. In fis­cal 2027, we will tar­get and at­tract more high pro­file com­pe­ti­tions, fur­ther strength­en­ing our sport­ing in­fra­struc­ture as we po­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­come the pre­mier sport tourism des­ti­na­tion in the Caribbean.

Our youth is our fu­ture and our pri­or­i­ty.

We are re­vis­ing the Na­tion­al Youth Pol­i­cy and de­vel­op­ing a new Na­tion­al Ser­vice Pol­i­cy to pro­vide a more co­or­di­nat­ed, rel­e­vant and in­clu­sive frame­work that

re­sponds to the chang­ing needs and as­pi­ra­tions of our young peo­ple.

In fis­cal 2027, we will launch 10 new skills pro­grammes in heavy ma­chin­ery re­pairs,

• heavy equip­ment op­er­a­tions,

• au­to­mo­tive re­pairs,

• au­to body works,

• mo­tor rewind­ing,

• elec­tric pow­er trans­form­ers,

• con­struc­tion ten­der­ing

• and cost train­ing, fork­lift op­er­a­tions, man­u­fac­tur­ing, cod­ing, and AI.

These pro­grammes cre­ate di­rect op­por­tu­ni­ties for skilled jobs and will al­so pro­vide path­ways for small and medi­um sized busi­ness­es.

The Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs will pro­vide more de­tails in his con­tri­bu­tion.

Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing

Dur­ing her 30 years in Par­lia­ment, the Mem­ber for Siparia built a lega­cy of rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing ed­u­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Mr. Speak­er, in the 2027 fis­cal year, we will con­tin­ue this trans­for­ma­tion through the fol­low­ing ini­tia­tives:

• The PEARL ini­tia­tive which was scoped and de­signed over the past year to as­sist stu­dents with cog­ni­tive chal­lenges, is set to be im­ple­ment­ed in fis­cal 2027.

This will ben­e­fit al­most 16,000 chil­dren im­me­di­ate­ly;

• To en­sure that our stu­dents are tech­no­log­i­cal­ly pre­pared, we are ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources and elec­tron­ic learn­ing to 200,000 stu­dents, 12,000 teach­ers and 1,500 ad­min­is­tra­tors;

• We are es­tab­lish­ing Af­ter-School Study Cen­tres for stu­dents from Stan­dard 1 to Form 3 in 100 schools, com­pris­ing 65 pri­ma­ry schools and 35 sec­ondary schools across the 7 ed­u­ca­tion dis­tricts.

This will en­sure that our chil­dren have the nec­es­sary foun­da­tion to in­crease their chances of suc­cess;

• To sup­port par­ents be­com­ing part­ners in their chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion­al suc­cess, we will train 300 fa­cil­i­ta­tors, es­tab­lish Par­ent Sup­port Teams and in­tro­duce a Na­tion­al Par­ent Por­tal through the Na­tion­al Parental Train­ing and Sup­port Pro­gramme;

• We will ad­vance work on the pro­posed Parental Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Act, re­in­forc­ing the prin­ci­ple that ed­u­ca­tion and nur­tur­ing are shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ties among the home, the school and the state;

• To bring our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem firm­ly in­to the dig­i­tal age, we will al­lo­cate $6.6 mil­lion to the AI in Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­gramme, NEXTCLASS TT and

EL­E­VATE TT. In 2026, we scoped and de­signed these pro­grammes and in fis­cal 2027 we will roll them out;

• In fis­cal 2026, we put 17,188 lap­tops in the hands of stu­dents across 154 schools. In fis­cal 2027, we will in­vest $100 mil­lion dol­lars to con­tin­ue to pro­vide lap­tops to our chil­dren; and

• We will con­tin­ue our in­vest­ment in UWI, UTT and COSTAATT and strength­en work­force de­vel­op­ment through the OJT Pro­gramme and oth­er na­tion­al

skills train­ing pro­grammes.

My col­leagues will pro­vide fur­ther de­tails on the ini­tia­tives we have tak­en and will be tak­ing in fis­cal 2027 to fix our ed­u­ca­tion eco-sys­tem.

Com­mu­ni­ty and Cul­ture: Unit­ing Peo­ple, Pre­serv­ing Iden­ti­ties

We recog­nise cul­ture as a uni­fy­ing force that de­fines our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty. We will har­ness its po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­ment, stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and boost tourism.

The Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment will pro­vide more de­tails in her con­tri­bu­tion.

Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty: Pro­tect­ing Our Peo­ple

Restor­ing law, or­der, and pub­lic safe­ty is a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty of this Gov­ern­ment.

For 10 years, the PNM’s fail­ures had cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es liv­ing in fear, de­spair, ap­pre­hen­sion, des­per­a­tion, pet­ri­fied of be­ing robbed, slaugh­tered and vi­o­lat­ed. For 10 years, they of­fered no so­lu­tion, no work­able plan.

In­stead, they gave us Ed­mund Dil­lon, Fitzger­ald Hinds, Port of Spain North / St. Ann’s West, Port of Spain South and Arou­ca/Lopinot. Every one of them failed.

To­day, they are in­tent on block­ing every rea­son­able crime-fight­ing so­lu­tion this Gov­ern­ment of­fers. It re­al­ly rais­es the ques­tion: who are they re­al­ly pro­tect­ing?

De­spite the PNM’s de­lib­er­ate sab­o­tage, our plans and po­lices are work­ing and here is the proof.

From Jan­u­ary to Ju­ly 20, 2026:

• se­ri­ous re­port­ed crimes fell by 1,217 in­ci­dents com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2024; and

• There were 118 few­er mur­ders com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2024;

Be­hind every one of those num­bers is a per­son, fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty. That is why sup­press­ing crime mat­ters.

Promise made. Promise kept. More to come!

As the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter said:

“There will be no safe haven for gangs, traf­fick­ers, ex­tor­tion­ists or or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­works.”

Smarter Polic­ing Through Tech­nol­o­gy

Crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions are in­creas­ing­ly us­ing tech­nol­o­gy and so­phis­ti­cat­ed net­works to hide their ac­tiv­i­ties and evade de­tec­tion.

This Gov­ern­ment is there­fore evolv­ing our ap­proach to polic­ing through,

• an in­te­grat­ed dig­i­tal plat­form and the ex­pand­ed use of fa­cial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy,

• au­to­mat­ic li­cence plate recog­ni­tion,

• geo-fenc­ing, sur­veil­lance sys­tems

• and oth­er in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

These tools will en­hance our pro­tec­tive ser­vices’ abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy crime hotspots, con­nect in­for­ma­tion across in­ves­ti­ga­tions, track sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty, and de­ploy re­sources where they are most need­ed.

Se­cur­ing Our Bor­ders

Our ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion makes Trinidad and To­ba­go vul­ner­a­ble to the move­ment of il­le­gal firearms, nar­cotics, hu­man traf­fick­ers and wider transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works.

We are there­fore strength­en­ing our bor­ders by en­hanc­ing mar­itime sur­veil­lance, in­tel­li­gence shar­ing, and op­er­a­tional co­or­di­na­tion.

To strength­en doc­u­ment se­cu­ri­ty, fraud de­tec­tion and the in­tegri­ty of our bor­ders, Trinidad and To­ba­go will tran­si­tion to a mod­ern Elec­tron­ic Pass­port Is­su­ing

Con­trol Sys­tem in Jan­u­ary 2027.

We will al­so in­ten­si­fy the op­er­a­tional readi­ness of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force through fur­ther in­vest­ment in Coast Guard ves­sels, mar­itime as­sets,

sur­veil­lance, naval in­fra­struc­ture and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port.

Stronger Pris­ons, Safer Com­mu­ni­ties

Re­form must al­so ex­tend be­hind prison walls. It is the be­lief of this Gov­ern­ment that a prison should dis­rupt crim­i­nal net­works rather than be­come a head­quar­ters where these net­works op­er­ate, grow, and thrive.

Gov­ern­ment is there­fore pro­gress­ing the $29.9 mil­lion Gold­en Grove Prison Perime­ter Se­cu­ri­ty Up­grade Project, while strength­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty, in­mate trans­porta­tion and emer­gency re­sponse ca­pac­i­ty through­out the cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem.

To off­set the high at­tri­tion and staffing short­ages in the prison ser­vice, 246 prison of­fi­cers have been re­cruit­ed, with a fur­ther 250 to fol­low. Promise made. Promise kept. More to come!

I now turn to To­ba­go.

Sup­port for the To­ba­go Blue­print: Path­way to Pros­per­i­ty 2026–2030 and the THA’s fis­cal 2027 pro­gramme rep­re­sents a shift to­wards in­vest­ment that

de­liv­ers mea­sur­able re­sults, ex­pands pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty and cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

To­wards this end, in 2027, the THA will con­tin­ue:

• Des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing;

• Strength­en­ing To­ba­go’s air con­nec­tiv­i­ty through a new wave of di­rect routes be­tween To­ba­go and Toron­to, Ogle Guyana as well as Mi­a­mi;

• Restora­tion and mod­erni­sa­tion of his­tor­i­cal and strate­gic tourism sites

• En­hance cul­tur­al and cre­ative tourism through the de­vel­op­ment of var­i­ous fes­ti­vals and pro­grammes

• And to­mor­row the Prime Min­is­ter will of­fi­cial­ly open the new ter­mi­nal at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

In 2027, the THA will ex­pand its Mega Farm Pro­gramme at Friend­ship Agro Park, con­tin­ue to im­prove agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads and in­crease tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial sup­port to farm­ers.

With re­spect to In­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment, pri­or­i­ty projects in­clude,

• the Friend­ship Es­tate De­vel­op­ment Project,

• the Scar­bor­ough Re­de­vel­op­ment Project,

• the Rox­bor­ough–Bloody Bay Road Re­tain­ing Wall,

• the South West Drainage Project,

• and is­land-wide road im­prove­ments.

In fis­cal 2027, the THA will ad­vance e-gov­ern­ment ser­vices, dig­i­tal pay­ments and digi­ti­sa­tion of pub­lic records, sup­port­ed by se­cure dig­i­tal plat­forms.

Plans for ed­u­ca­tion in­clude in­vest­ments in class­room tech­nol­o­gy, teacher train­ing, ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion and ex­pand­ed vo­ca­tion­al and ter­tiary op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The As­sem­bly will con­tin­ue to sup­port lo­cal busi­ness­es by ad­vanc­ing its suc­cess­ful trade ini­tia­tives, and col­lab­o­rate with the TTMA to ex­pand re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket ac­cess.

The As­sem­bly will pri­ori­tise, the es­tab­lish­ment of an On­col­o­gy Cen­tre and the ac­qui­si­tion of:

• an MRI ma­chine,

• hy­per­bar­ic equip­ment,

• and oth­er spe­cialised di­ag­nos­tic tools,

to pro­vide mod­ern, To­ba­go-based med­ical ser­vices there­by re­duc­ing the need to trav­el to Trinidad for crit­i­cal med­ical care.

In ad­di­tion to in­vest­ing in roads, drainage, com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture, rur­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and street­light­ing in un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties, in 2027, the THA will con­tin­ue to bring af­ford­able hous­ing to the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

It will de­liv­er:

• 130 units at Rise­land;

• 120 hous­ing units at Ad­ven­ture Phase III;

• 52 ser­vice lots at Adel­phi, 15 at Blenheim and 19

in Cas­tara; and

• 350 hous­ing grants rang­ing from $20,000 to

$50,000.

The THA will con­tin­ue to in­vest in the so­cial sec­tor through the REACH Pro­gramme and the Emer­gency Food Card pro­gramme in Fis­cal 2027.

The THA’s plans for youth and sport in­clude the re­turn of the To­ba­go Games, up­grades to Recre­ation­al Grounds, pro­fes­sion­al sport­ing schol­ar­ships and To­ba­go’s semi­pro­fes­sion­al sport leagues.

In fis­cal 2027 $100 mil­lion in CAF fi­nanc­ing will fa­cil­i­tate projects for coastal pro­tec­tion, re­for­esta­tion, the Sar­gas­sum Re­sponse Project, ma­rine in­fra­struc­ture and elec­tric-ve­hi­cle charg­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

I am pleased to an­nounce that this Gov­ern­ment is al­lo­cat­ing $2.756 bil­lion to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly for Fis­cal 2027, rep­re­sent­ing 4.35 per­cent of the Na­tion­al Bud­get.

How­ev­er, there is more. In ad­di­tion, a fur­ther $716.5 mil­lion will be spent by var­i­ous Min­istries on ser­vices and projects for the ben­e­fit of To­ba­go.

In this re­gard, the to­tal al­lo­ca­tion to To­ba­go in fis­cal 2027 will be $3.473 bil­lion which equates to 5.48 per­cent of the Na­tion­al Bud­get.

The Na­tion’s Fi­nances: Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue and Ex­pen­di­ture and the Fis­cal Out­look 2026 Fis­cal Per­for­mance

The re­vised es­ti­mate for Fis­cal 2026 projects a deficit of $7 bil­lion with rev­enue of $54.247 bil­lion and ex­pen­di­ture of $61.247 bil­lion. This is con­sis­tent with

the Mid-Year re­view es­ti­mates.

Fis­cal 2026/2027 Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue and Ex­pen­di­ture

Our oil price as­sump­tion for 2027 is US$77.00 per bar­rel, com­pared with US$73.25 per bar­rel in 2026; and our nat­ur­al gas price as­sump­tion will be US$5.00 per MMB­tu, com­pared with US$4.25 per MMB­tu in 2026.

As a re­sult of these com­mod­i­ty price es­ti­mates, we ex­pect:

• To­tal Rev­enue $59.729 bil­lion

• To­tal Ex­pen­di­ture $63.368 bil­lion

• Fis­cal Deficit $ 3.639 bil­lion

The to­tal es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue of $59.729 bil­lion

com­pris­es:

• Oil rev­enue $14.355 bil­lion

• Non-oil rev­enue $ 45.062 bil­lion

• Cap­i­tal rev­enue $ 0.312 bil­lion

It should be not­ed that the fis­cal deficit of $3.639 bil­lion is 2.1 per­cent of GDP, again with­in the in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark of 3 per­cent.

Pur­suant to our Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Agen­da, the cen­tral fis­cal 2027 al­lo­ca­tions are as fol­lows:

• Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing $ 8.033 bil­lion

• Health $ 8.061 bil­lion

• Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty $ 7.321 bil­lion

• Pub­lic Util­i­ties $ 4.087 bil­lion

• In­fra­struc­ture $ 2.081 bil­lion

• Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment $ 2.323 bil­lion

• Trans­port $ 1.712 bil­lion

• Agri­cul­ture $ 0.987 bil­lion

• Hous­ing $ 0.904 bil­lion

Fis­cal and Oth­er Mea­sures

I now turn to the fis­cal and oth­er mea­sures.

Rev­enue Rais­ing and Pro­tect­ing the Tax Base

1. In­tro­duce a lim­it on car­ried-for­ward loss­es for gen­er­al trade and busi­ness:

Our tax sys­tem must strike a bal­ance be­tween sup­port­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and en­sur­ing that prof­itable en­ter­pris­es make a fair and time­ly con­tri­bu­tion to the rev­enues re­quired for our na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties.

Cur­rent­ly, busi­ness­es may car­ry for­ward ac­cu­mu­lat­ed loss­es to re­duce tax­able prof­its in sub­se­quent years. While the Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of this pro­vi­sion to al­low busi­ness­es to re­cov­er from pe­ri­ods of fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty, we al­so be­lieve that there should be an ap­pro­pri­ate bal­ance in the amount of ac­cu­mu­lat­ed loss­es ap­plied in any one year.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, I pro­pose to lim­it the util­i­sa­tion of car­ried for­ward loss­es for all busi­ness­es to 75 per­cent of charge­able prof­its in any in­come year.

This mea­sure will con­tribute $430m to rev­enue and takes ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

2. In­crease in Un­em­ploy­ment Levy:

The Un­em­ploy­ment Levy was un­changed at 5 per­cent since 1989. Over that pe­ri­od, the needs of our work­force and the econ­o­my have evolved con­sid­er­ably.

To en­sure that we have ad­e­quate re­sources to sup­port work­ers and strength­en their de­vel­op­ment, I pro­pose to in­crease the Un­em­ploy­ment Levy on the tax­able prof­its of pe­tro­le­um com­pa­nies from 5 to 8 per­cent.

This mea­sure will gen­er­ate an ad­di­tion­al $155 mil­lion and takes ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

3. Ad­just­ment to With­hold­ing Tax Rates on Dis­tri­b­u­tions:

I pro­pose to in­crease the with­hold­ing tax on dis­tri­b­u­tions made to non-res­i­dent in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies from 8 to 10 per­cent, while the rate on dis­tri­b­u­tions to non res­i­dent par­ent com­pa­nies will in­crease from 3 to 5 per­cent.

4. Re­form­ing the Tax­a­tion of Al­co­holic Bev­er­ages:

Gov­ern­ment has re­viewed the ef­fect of the in­crease in ex­cise du­ties on al­co­holic bev­er­ages

• ↓with the ob­jec­tive of achiev­ing a fair­er bal­ance be­tween sup­port­ing lo­cal pro­duc­tion,

• ↓en­sur­ing con­sis­tent treat­ment of im­port­ed prod­ucts

• ↓and main­tain­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate con­tri­bu­tion to the rev­enues of the State.

I pro­pose to re­duce the ap­plic­a­ble ex­cise rates by 25 per cent.

These re­vised ex­cise rates will be ex­tend­ed to im­port­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages, es­tab­lish­ing a more con­sis­tent ex­cise treat­ment be­tween lo­cal­ly pro­duced and im­port­ed prod­ucts.

We will al­so re­form the cus­toms du­ty struc­ture on im­port­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages by mov­ing from the ex­ist­ing spe­cif­ic du­ties charged by vol­ume to an ad val­orem rate based on the val­ue of the prod­uct. This will af­fect im­port­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages which do not ben­e­fit from pref­er­en­tial cus­toms treat­ment un­der Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­ist­ing trade agree­ments, with high­er-val­ue im­ports bear­ing a high­er amount of cus­toms du­ty.

These mea­sures will pro­vide some re­lief to our lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers, es­tab­lish greater con­sis­ten­cy in the ap­pli­ca­tion of ex­cise du­ties and cre­ate a more ap­pro­pri­ate cus­toms du­ty struc­ture for im­port­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages.

These mea­sures will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

5. Stan­dard-rate all sup­plies of dig­i­tal and re­mote ser­vices:

Much of the dig­i­tal ser­vices con­sumed in Trinidad and To­ba­go are sup­plied by busi­ness­es lo­cat­ed out­side of our bor­ders. These en­ti­ties do not con­tribute to our coun­try’s in­come.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, the Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to ap­ply VAT to dig­i­tal ser­vices sup­plied by non-res­i­dent providers to per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

To fa­cil­i­tate com­pli­ance and col­lec­tion, a sim­pli­fied reg­is­tra­tion will be in­tro­duced for non-res­i­dent sup­pli­ers, in­clud­ing sup­pli­ers of tax­able ser­vices con­nect­ed with re­al prop­er­ty sit­u­at­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go, al­low­ing them to reg­is­ter, col­lect and re­mit VAT elec­tron­i­cal­ly.

This mea­sure will broad­en our tax base, strength­en the col­lec­tion of VAT and pro­mote more con­sis­tent tax treat­ment be­tween ser­vices sup­plied from abroad and those sup­plied do­mes­ti­cal­ly.

The mea­sure will gen­er­ate $18 mil­lion in rev­enue and takes ef­fect on March 1, 2027.

6. Amend the de­f­i­n­i­tion of “Pay­ments” in Sec­tion 50(1)(b) of the In­come Tax Act Ch. 75:01:

Un­der the ex­ist­ing with­hold­ing tax frame­work, the treat­ment of cer­tain pay­ments to non-res­i­dents de­pends on whether the pay­ment or un­der­ly­ing in­come aris­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This cre­ates cir­cum­stances in which ser­vices sup­plied re­mote­ly to Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es fall out­side the with­hold­ing tax net.

I pro­pose to amend the In­come Tax Act to clar­i­fy the cir­cum­stances in which pay­ments for man­age­ment tech­ni­cal and oth­er pre­scribed ser­vices to non-res­i­dents will be treat­ed for with­hold­ing tax pur­pos­es.

The amend­ment will con­sid­er where the oblig­a­tion to make the pay­ment aris­es and where the rel­e­vant cost is in­curred.

This mea­sure will close a leg­isla­tive loop­hole and pro­tect our coun­try’s tax base.

The mea­sure will gen­er­ate $300 mil­lion in rev­enue and takes ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

7. Amend Sec­tion 10 of the In­come Tax Act to dis­al­low a de­duc­tion for ex­pens­es in­curred in earn­ing ex­empt in­come:

At present, ex­pens­es in­curred in earn­ing ex­empt in­come may, in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, be de­duct­ed in de­ter­min­ing tax­able in­come. This can re­duce the tax payable on oth­er in­come, al­though the re­lat­ed in­come is it­self ex­empt from tax.

To ad­dress this in­con­sis­ten­cy and strength­en the in­tegri­ty of our tax sys­tem, I pro­pose to amend Sec­tion 10 of the In­come Tax Act to ex­press­ly dis­al­low de­duc­tions for ex­pens­es in­curred in earn­ing ex­empt in­come.

This amend­ment will pro­vide greater clar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy in the tax treat­ment of ex­empt in­come, while en­sur­ing that tax con­ces­sions op­er­ate as in­tend­ed.

This mea­sure is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate $75 mil­lion in rev­enue and will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

8. Strength­en­ing To­bac­co Con­trols and Reg­u­lat­ing Va­p­ing Prod­ucts:

I pro­pose to amend the To­bac­co Con­trol Act to pro­vide clear­er rules for the com­mer­cial pos­ses­sion and im­por­ta­tion of cig­a­rettes.

Pos­ses­sion of 10,000 or more to­bac­co prod­ucts will now con­sti­tute pri­ma fa­cie ev­i­dence of dis­tri­b­u­tion, while the im­por­ta­tion of 800 or more cig­a­rettes will re­quire an ap­pro­pri­ate im­port li­cence.

Gov­ern­ment will al­so bring all va­p­ing prod­ucts with­in an ap­pro­pri­ate reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

Va­p­ing in pub­lic places and the sale of va­p­ing prod­ucts to per­sons un­der the age of 21 will be pro­hib­it­ed. I al­so pro­pose to es­tab­lish a 20 per­cent rate of cus­toms du­ty on va­p­ing de­vices and prod­ucts. These mea­sures will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

9. Es­tab­lish­ing a Frame­work for Clas­sic, An­tique and Vin­tage mo­tor ve­hi­cles:

The Gov­ern­ment is de­vel­op­ing a niche in­dus­try around the col­lec­tion, restora­tion and preser­va­tion of his­toric mo­tor ve­hi­cles, cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for skilled trades and spe­cialised ser­vices while sup­port­ing au­to­mo­tive shows, cul­tur­al events and tourism.

We will es­tab­lish reg­u­la­tions for the im­por­ta­tion, reg­is­tra­tion and use of Clas­sic, An­tique and Vin­tage mo­tor ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing im­port con­trols and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed rates of Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Tax.

Un­der the new arrange­ments, the rate of Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Tax will in­crease by 100 per­cent for Clas­sic ve­hi­cles, 50 per­cent for An­tique ve­hi­cles and 25 per­cent for Vin­tage ve­hi­cles.

The mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

10. Pro­mot­ing En­er­gy Con­ser­va­tion and Sup­port­ing Low-Us­age House­holds:

Ef­fi­cient man­age­ment of our en­er­gy re­sources should en­cour­age con­ser­va­tion while pro­tect­ing house­holds with mod­est en­er­gy needs.

I there­fore pro­pose to in­tro­duce an elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge of 5 cents per kilo­watt-hour on res­i­den­tial con­sump­tion above 3,000 kilo­watt-hours per billing pe­ri­od.

This thresh­old will en­sure that av­er­age house­holds with mod­er­ate lev­els of elec­tric­i­ty us­age re­main un­af­fect­ed. I am ad­vised that 90% of house­holds fall be­low this thresh­old, in oth­er words this sur­charge will ap­ply to 10% of cit­i­zens, house­holds that are us­ing much more that the av­er­age us­age of elec­tric­i­ty.

The rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from this sur­charge will help fi­nance the ex­ist­ing elec­tric­i­ty sub­sidy pro­vid­ed to house­holds with very low lev­els of elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion.

This mea­sure is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate an ad­di­tion­al $17.8 mil­lion in rev­enue and will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

11. In­crease in Per­son­al Al­lowance for pen­sion­ers:

In fis­cal 2026, we pro­vid­ed mean­ing­ful re­lief to thou­sands of se­nior cit­i­zens by mak­ing their pri­vate pen­sions tax-free.

How­ev­er, many pen­sion­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­tired pub­lic of­fi­cers, re­main sub­ject to tax on pen­sion in­come ex­ceed­ing $90,000.

Our pub­lic of­fi­cers have giv­en decades of ser­vice to this coun­try and de­serve greater fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty in re­tire­ment.

I there­fore pro­pose to in­crease the Per­son­al Al­lowance for pen­sion­ers from $90,000 to $102,000 per year.

This mea­sure will pro­vide ap­prox­i­mate­ly $11 mil­lion in tax re­lief to pen­sion­ers and will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

12. Sup­port­ing the For­mal­i­sa­tion and Growth of Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es:

Gov­ern­ment will de­vel­op a Farm Busi­ness For­mal­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme to as­sist reg­is­tered farm­ers who wish to for­malise and strength­en their agri­cul­tur­al busi­ness­es.

The pro­gramme will be a one stop shop, pro­vid­ing sup­port in ar­eas such as land tenure, busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion, record-keep­ing, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, ac­cess to fi­nance and oth­er agri­cul­tur­al sup­port pro­grammes.

This mea­sure will take im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

13. Build­ing the Next Gen­er­a­tion of Agri­cul­tur­al En­tre­pre­neurs and Pro­fes­sion­als:

To strength­en our agri­cul­tur­al ecosys­tem, we must equip more young peo­ple with the skills and op­por­tu­ni­ties to build suc­cess­ful fu­tures in agri­cul­ture.

I there­fore pro­pose to ex­pand the Agri­cul­tur­al In­tern­ship Pro­gramme from 30 in­terns to 100 in­terns.

The Pro­gramme will con­nect young peo­ple with op­por­tu­ni­ties across the agri­cul­tur­al val­ue chain, from pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion and agro-pro­cess­ing to tech­nol­o­gy, re­search, dis­tri­b­u­tion and oth­er agri­cul­tur­al ser­vices.

We will al­so ex­plore ap­pro­pri­ate sup­port for those in­terns who wish to es­tab­lish agri­cul­tur­al en­ter­pris­es of their own.

Mod­ernising Tax Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Strength­en­ing Com­pli­ance.

14. Con­ver­sion of ze­ro-rat­ed items to Ex­empt

Sta­tus: The Gov­ern­ment has care­ful­ly con­sid­ered the rec­om­men­da­tions aris­ing from the re­cent re­view of our VAT sys­tem.

The re­view makes a strong case for sim­pli­fy­ing the VAT sys­tem, re­duc­ing the ex­ten­sive use of ze­ro-rat­ing and broad­en­ing the VAT base.

These re­forms can strength­en rev­enue col­lec­tion, im­prove the ad­min­is­tra­tion of VAT and re­duce some of the pres­sures as­so­ci­at­ed with VAT re­funds.

This Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing price sta­bil­i­ty and avoid­ing mea­sures that could place un­nec­es­sary pres­sure on house­hold prices.

We will there­fore pre­serve ze­ro-rat­ing on se­lect­ed ba­sic and es­sen­tial items, while mov­ing se­lect­ed items from ze­ro-rat­ed to VAT-ex­empt sta­tus.

I wish to em­pha­sise that these goods will con­tin­ue to at­tract no VAT at the point of sale.

This mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

15. In­tro­duce a VAT clear­ance fee:

At present, a fee of $100 ap­plies to a stan­dard Tax Clear­ance Cer­tifi­cate, but there is no cost for a VAT clear­ance cer­tifi­cate.

I pro­pose to in­tro­duce a fee of $100 for the is­suance of a VAT Clear­ance Cer­tifi­cate.

This mea­sure will pro­vide an ad­di­tion­al $500,000 in rev­enue and will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

16. Ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of VAT Reg­is­tra­tion of Gov­ern­ment En­ti­ties:

The Gov­ern­ment has al­so re­viewed the VAT reg­is­tra­tion of statu­to­ry agen­cies and oth­er pub­lic bod­ies and found that a num­ber of en­ti­ties are cur­rent­ly VAT-reg­is­tered even though they do not make tax­able sup­plies, pri­mar­i­ly as a re­sult of an ear­li­er ad­min­is­tra­tive pol­i­cy.

En­ti­ties that do not meet the re­quire­ments for VAT reg­is­tra­tion will there­fore be un­reg­is­tered, while those mak­ing tax­able sup­plies will con­tin­ue to be as­sessed in ac­cor­dance with the VAT Act.

This mea­sure will im­prove VAT ad­min­is­tra­tion and re­duce un­nec­es­sary re­fund claims with­in the pub­lic sec­tor.

This mea­sure will take ef­fect with­in the first quar­ter of 2027.

17. In­tro­duce a penal­ty for non-fil­ing VAT Re­turns:

While penal­ties cur­rent­ly ap­ply for the non-fil­ing of In­come Tax and Cor­po­ra­tion Tax re­turns, there is no com­pa­ra­ble penal­ty for the non-fil­ing of VAT re­turns.

To ad­dress this gap and strength­en VAT com­pli­ance, the Gov­ern­ment will in­tro­duce a penal­ty of $100 for every two months that a VAT re­turn re­mains out­stand­ing.

This mea­sure will en­cour­age time­ly fil­ing, strength­en VAT ad­min­is­tra­tion and im­prove the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to sup­port rev­enue man­age­ment and eco­nom­ic plan­ning.

This mea­sure will pro­vide an ad­di­tion­al $5 mil­lion in rev­enue and will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

18. Manda­to­ry e-fill­ing through GEN­TAX:

Gov­ern­ment will in­tro­duce manda­to­ry elec­tron­ic fil­ing through the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion’s GEN­TAX sys­tem for all tax­pay­ers. This mea­sure rep­re­sents an im­por­tant step in the mod­erni­sa­tion and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of tax ad­min­is­tra­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. GEN­TAX will pro­vide all tax­pay­ers with a sin­gle, stream­lined and more ef­fi­cient plat­form through which they can meet their tax oblig­a­tions with­out hav­ing to man­u­al­ly file re­turns.

This re­moves un­nec­es­sary ad­min­is­tra­tive bar­ri­ers while strength­en­ing com­pli­ance.

It fa­cil­i­tates more ef­fec­tive ad­min­is­tra­tion of the tax sys­tem and pro­vide greater con­ve­nience to tax­pay­ers.

19. In­crease penal­ties for false de­c­la­ra­tions un­der the Cus­toms Act:

To strength­en com­pli­ance and de­ter all false Cus­toms de­c­la­ra­tions, I pro­pose to in­crease the penal­ty un­der Sec­tion 212 of the Cus­toms Act from $125,000 to $250,000. The mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

20. In­crease in the For­eign Cur­ren­cy De­c­la­ra­tion Thresh­old:

The ex­ist­ing US$5,000 for­eign cur­ren­cy de­c­la­ra­tion thresh­old places a re­port­ing re­quire­ment on trav­ellers at a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est lev­el.

Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers that this thresh­old should now be up­dat­ed to bet­ter re­flect present-day trav­el and com­mer­cial re­al­i­ties, while al­low­ing Cus­toms to re­main fo­cused on high­er-risk move­ments of cur­ren­cy.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, I pro­pose to in­crease the for­eign cur­ren­cy de­c­la­ra­tion thresh­old from US$5,000 to US$10,000.This thresh­old is al­so con­sis­tent with the bench­mark used in a num­ber of ju­ris­dic­tions.

This mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

21. Mod­ernising the Reg­u­la­tion of Cus­toms Bro­kers and Cus­toms Clerks:

Leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing cus­toms bro­kers and clerks dates back to 1970 and does not re­flect mod­ern stan­dards of gov­er­nance, ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice.

Gov­ern­ment there­fore pro­pos­es to amend the Cus­toms Bro­kers and Cus­toms Clerks Act, Chap. 78:03, to pro­vide an en­force­able code of ethics, strength­en the li­cens­ing regime, re­struc­ture the Cus­toms Bro­kers and Cus­toms Clerks Board, up­date of­fences and penal­ties, and re­vise the ap­plic­a­ble fees.

We will al­so es­tab­lish a for­mal ap­peals tri­bunal to pro­vide an ap­pro­pri­ate mech­a­nism for re­view­ing de­ci­sions made un­der the Act.

This mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

22. Amend the Reg­is­tra­tion of Clubs Act to pay tax­es quar­ter­ly:

To pro­vide greater flex­i­bil­i­ty and en­cour­age time­ly com­pli­ance, I pro­pose to amend the Reg­is­tra­tion of Clubs Act to al­low reg­is­tered mem­bers’ clubs to pay their tax­es on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis, rather than an­nu­al, ba­sis. This mea­sure will al­low busi­ness­es to bet­ter man­age their cash flow while pro­vid­ing Gov­ern­ment with a more reg­u­lar and pre­dictable flow of rev­enue through­out the year.

The mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

23. Ex­pand­ing Tech­ni­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion in Sec­ondary Schools:

Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide $16.3 mil­lion in fis­cal 2027 to com­mence the In­te­grat­ed Ex­pan­sion of Tech­ni­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion in Sec­ondary Schools.

We will un­der­take tar­get­ed work­shop im­prove­ments and pro­vide equip­ment in 22 pri­or­i­ty sec­ondary schools, while prac­ti­cal learn­ing ma­te­ri­als will be pro­vid­ed across all 56 schools cov­ered by the pro­gramme.

Stu­dents will have ex­pand­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for prac­ti­cal learn­ing in ar­eas in­clud­ing agri­cul­ture, car­pen­try, plumb­ing, elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic tech­nol­o­gy, air con­di­tion­ing and re­frig­er­a­tion, weld­ing, au­to­mo­tive sys­tems, tech­ni­cal draw­ing, com­put­er-aid­ed de­sign and steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing. The pro­gramme will al­so sup­port cur­ricu­lum de­vel­op­ment, teacher and as­ses­sor prepa­ra­tion and ca­reer guid­ance.

24. Es­tab­lish­ment of the READY In­tern­ship Pro­gramme:

Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to al­lo­cate TT$2 mil­lion in fis­cal 2027 to launch the Re­al Ex­pe­ri­ence and De­vel­op­ment for Youth In­tern­ship Pro­gramme - READY, pro­vid­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,300 sec­ondary school stu­dents aged 16 years and over with struc­tured work ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust 2027 va­ca­tion pe­ri­od. Par­tic­i­pants will un­der­take four-week in­tern­ships across Gov­ern­ment Min­istries, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and par­tic­i­pat­ing pri­vate-sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions, com­bin­ing prac­ti­cal work­place ex­pe­ri­ence with train­ing in fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, work­place ethics, ré­sumé writ­ing and in­ter­view prepa­ra­tion. Each par­tic­i­pant will re­ceive a TT$1,500 stipend.

25. Strength­en­ing Sup­port for Our Most Vul­ner­a­ble Cit­i­zens:

As men­tioned ear­li­er we pro­pose to in­crease:

The Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Grant, Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant and Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant will be in­creased by $250 per month.

These mea­sures will cost an ad­di­tion­al $555 mil­lion and take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

26. Es­tab­lish­ment of the Na­tion­al Care and Sup­port Pro­gramme:

Gov­ern­ment has be­gun the trans­for­ma­tion of Geri­atric Ado­les­cent Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme in­to a broad­er Na­tion­al Care and Sup­port Pro­gramme com­pris­ing home care and sup­port for:

• Old­er Per­sons;

• Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties; and

• Per­sons re­quir­ing tem­po­rary or short-term as­sis­tance.

Each com­po­nent will be de­signed around the needs of ben­e­fi­cia­ries, with ap­pro­pri­ate el­i­gi­bil­i­ty re­quire­ments, care­giv­er com­pe­ten­cies, su­per­vi­sion and safe­guards.

27. In­crease in Penal­ty for non-pay­ment of Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Con­tri­bu­tions:

Em­ploy­ers are re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions due for their em­ploy­ees are paid.

Fail­ure to do so com­pro­mis­es work­ers’ con­tri­bu­tion records and, ul­ti­mate­ly, their ac­cess to Na­tion­al In­sur­ance ben­e­fits.

I there­fore pro­pose to strength­en the penal­ties for em­ploy­ers who fail or ne­glect to pay the re­quired Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions.

The max­i­mum fine on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion will in­crease from $4,000 to $8,000.

The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board will be em­pow­ered to waive statu­to­ry penal­ties in whole or in part, sub­ject to ap­pro­pri­ate over­sight trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

This mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

28. Im­prov­ing the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Claims and Ap­peals Process:

The Gov­ern­ment in­her­it­ed a long­stand­ing back­log of Na­tion­al In­sur­ance ap­peals, with over 1,000 un­re­solved mat­ters. Be­hind these out­stand­ing ap­peals are pen­sion­ers, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and work­ers seek­ing ben­e­fits to which they may be le­git­i­mate­ly en­ti­tled.

In fis­cal 2027, this Gov­ern­ment will un­der­take a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance claims and ap­peals sys­tem.

The re­view will con­duct with tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance from an in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment part­ner and will ex­am­ine the caus­es of de­lays and make rec­om­men­da­tions for res­o­lu­tion.

29. Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Ben­e­fit El­i­gi­bil­i­ty

Fol­low­ing the COVID-19 Shut­downs: Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, re­stric­tions on eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty re­sult­ed in the tem­po­rary clo­sure of sev­er­al sec­tors, leav­ing many work­ers un­able to earn an in­come or make Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.

We there­fore pro­pose to amend the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance leg­is­la­tion to make ap­pro­pri­ate pro­vi­sions for work­ers who were un­fair­ly de­nied ben­e­fits as a re­sult of COVID 19 shut­downs.

To im­prove the ease of do­ing busi­ness Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to amend the For­eign In­vest­ment Act by sim­pli­fy­ing the rules for for­eign ac­qui­si­tion of land and shares, in­clud­ing trans­ac­tions up to US$100,000 in to­tal. We will al­so ex­empt Cari­com na­tion­als from the con­sid­er­a­tion rule.

I pro­pose to in­tro­duce a le­gal re­quire­ment for ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship in­for­ma­tion dis­clo­sure from for­eign in­vestors, and stream­line ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es to re­duce un­nec­es­sary de­lays.

These re­forms will make the for­eign in­vest­ment process faster, sim­pler and more trans­par­ent while al­so strength­en­ing reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight.

This mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027 with the rel­e­vant del­e­ga­tion arrange­ments to be im­ple­ment­ed sep­a­rate­ly.

30. Im­prov­ing the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of the For­eign Ex­change Regime:

Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to make tar­get­ed amend­ments to the Ex­change Con­trol Act to clar­i­fy the ex­ist­ing arrange­ments gov­ern­ing the im­por­ta­tion and ex­por­ta­tion of for­eign cur­ren­cy notes.

They will al­so re­quire au­tho­rised deal­ers to pro­vide full dis­clo­sure to the Cen­tral Bank con­cern­ing move­ment of cash.

This mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

31. Tran­si­tion­ing to a Per­ma­nent Reg­u­la­to­ry Frame­work for Vir­tu­al As­sets:

The ex­ist­ing tran­si­tion­al arrange­ments un­der the Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Act, 2025 are due to ex­pire on De­cem­ber 31, 2026.

Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to ex­tend the ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box and pro­vide for full li­cens­ing of vir­tu­al as­sets and ser­vice providers.

This will in­clude strength­en­ing gov­er­nance, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, con­sumer pro­tec­tion, safe­guard­ing of client as­sets, fi­nan­cial in­tegri­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight.

This mea­sure will take ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

32. Launch of Gov­ern­ment Sav­ings Bond Pro­gramme:

This Gov­ern­ment will launch a Gov­ern­ment Sav­ings Bond Pro­gramme, cre­at­ing a new and ac­ces­si­ble av­enue for cit­i­zens to in­vest di­rect­ly in se­cu­ri­ties is­sued by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The pro­gramme is de­signed pri­mar­i­ly with in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens and small savers in mind, al­low­ing per­sons to in­vest amounts such as $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 or more. We in­tend to of­fer these Bonds with a fix rate of in­ter­est, in both Trinidad and To­ba­go and Unit­ed States dol­lars and with var­i­ous tenors.

These bonds will pro­vide cit­i­zens with an ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty, of­fer­ing com­pet­i­tive re­turns while help­ing them build long-term fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty.

They will al­so deep­en the lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­ket, broad­en in­vest­ment op­tions, and im­por­tant­ly, pro­vide a do­mes­tic av­enue for US dol­lar sav­ings.

33. Em­pow­er­ing the Av­er­age Cit­i­zen through Ex­pand­ed In­vest­ment Op­por­tu­ni­ties:

This Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing an­oth­er bold step in build­ing a more in­clu­sive and dy­nam­ic cap­i­tal mar­ket by in­tro­duc­ing a Re­tail Gov­ern­ment Se­cu­ri­ties Pro­gramme that will place Gov­ern­ment bonds with­in the reach of or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

For too long, in­vest­ment in Gov­ern­ment se­cu­ri­ties has been con­cen­trat­ed among in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

We in­tend to change this by of­fer­ing se­cu­ri­ties in small­er de­nom­i­na­tions,

• ↓in­clud­ing in­vest­ments from as lit­tle as TT$5,000,

• ↓al­low­ing teach­ers, nurs­es, young pro­fes­sion­als, small busi­ness own­ers, pen­sion­ers and first-time in­vestors

• ↓to par­tic­i­pate di­rect­ly in one of the coun­try’s safest and most im­por­tant in­vest­ment class­es.

This ini­tia­tive is about em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens to save, in­vest and build per­son­al wealth.

This pro­gramme will be sup­port­ed by the Gov­ern­ment’s move to­wards the de­ma­te­ri­al­i­sa­tion of Gov­ern­ment se­cu­ri­ties, re­plac­ing pa­per cer­tifi­cates.

The se­cu­ri­ties will be record­ed elec­tron­i­cal­ly through the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cen­tral De­pos­i­to­ry and will be list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change, with trad­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed through li­censed bro­kers.

34. Cap­i­tal Mar­ket Deep­en­ing:

To de­vel­op the lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­ket, the Gov­ern­ment will en­gage an in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner to con­duct a di­ag­nos­tic on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gov­ern­ment Lo­cal Cur­ren­cy Bond Mar­ket.

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of this di­ag­nos­tic, this Gov­ern­ment will pro­duce a se­quenced re­form roadmap which will be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s cash and debt man­age­ment frame­work.

This will sup­port im­proved plan­ning, cash-flow fore­cast­ing and the de­vel­op­ment of a deep­er and more ef­fec­tive yield curve.

Con­clu­sion: De­liv­ery Un­der­way. Progress Ahead

18 months ago, this Gov­ern­ment ac­cept­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of restor­ing sta­bil­i­ty, re­build­ing con­fi­dence and re­turn­ing the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple to the cen­tre of na­tion­al de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

The task was dif­fi­cult, but we did not re­treat from it. We made the dif­fi­cult but nec­es­sary de­ci­sions.

To­day, the ev­i­dence of progress can be seen in our im­prov­ing fis­cal po­si­tion, re­newed in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence, in­vest­ments in pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture and sev­er­al re­forms un­der­way across Gov­ern­ment.

We recog­nise that much re­mains to be done.

Progress must be ac­cel­er­at­ed, im­ple­men­ta­tion strength­ened and re­sults felt more di­rect­ly in the homes and com­mu­ni­ties of our cit­i­zens.

This Bud­get there­fore marks the next phase of our na­tion­al agen­da.

It is a Bud­get to at­tract in­vest­ment, ex­pand pro­duc­tion, cre­ate em­ploy­ment, strength­en re­silience and open new op­por­tu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es.

Promise made. Promise kept. More to come!