Govt’s $63.3B budget gives more to pensioners, taxes remote digital services

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has pre­sent­ed a $63.368 bil­lion na­tion­al bud­get for fis­cal year 2027 to­day, an­chor­ing the pack­age with across-the-board in­creas­es in so­cial wel­fare grants, an al­lo­ca­tion of near­ly $2.5 bil­lion for pub­lic sec­tor wage ar­rears, and tar­get­ed tax mea­sures aimed at re­mote dig­i­tal ser­vices, cor­po­rate loss­es, and high-us­age elec­tric­i­ty con­sumers.

De­liv­er­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sec­ond bud­get un­der the theme "A Peo­ple-Cen­tered Ap­proach: In­vest­ing in Com­mu­ni­ties, Trans­form­ing the Econ­o­my and Se­cur­ing a Sus­tain­able Fu­ture," Min­is­ter Tan­coo pro­ject­ed to­tal rev­enue of $59.729 bil­lion, leav­ing an es­ti­mat­ed fis­cal deficit of $3.639 bil­lion, or 2.1 per cent of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct.

The fis­cal frame­work is pegged against an as­sumed crude oil price of US$77.00 per bar­rel and a nat­ur­al gas net­back price of US$5.00 per MMB­tu, with en­er­gy re­ceipts es­ti­mat­ed at $14.355 bil­lion and non-oil rev­enues pro­ject­ed at $45.062 bil­lion.

So­cial grants in­creased by $250 month­ly

Plac­ing di­rect re­lief at the top of the Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da, Min­is­ter Tan­coo an­nounced an im­me­di­ate $250 month­ly in­crease to the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Grant, the Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant, and the Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant, tak­ing ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

The grant ad­just­ments will cost an es­ti­mat­ed $555 mil­lion and pro­vide fi­nan­cial re­lief to more than 165,000 vul­ner­a­ble re­cip­i­ents. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, re­tired pub­lic of­fi­cers re­ceived a boost through an in­crease in the per­son­al tax al­lowance for pen­sion­ers from $90,000 to $102,000 per an­num.

The Min­is­ter al­so reaf­firmed the State’s com­mit­ment to pub­lic ser­vants, set­ting aside ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2.5 bil­lion to ho­n­our out­stand­ing wage agree­ments, in­clud­ing a 40 per cent cash pay­ment on ar­rears for Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers and over $760 mil­lion in wage ad­just­ments and back­pay for the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers.

Dig­i­tal ser­vices and cor­po­rate tax mea­sures

To bal­ance these so­cial com­mit­ments, the Min­istry of Fi­nance in­tro­duced sev­er­al rev­enue-rais­ing mea­sures and tax-tight­en­ing pro­vi­sions set to roll out in ear­ly 2027.

Be­gin­ning March 1, 2027, the State will stan­dard-rate all sup­plies of dig­i­tal and re­mote ser­vices, ap­ply­ing Val­ue Added Tax to for­eign non-res­i­dent stream­ing, soft­ware, and dig­i­tal plat­form providers to gen­er­ate an es­ti­mat­ed $18 mil­lion.

Cor­po­rate tax arrange­ments will al­so see ma­jor ad­just­ments: the util­i­sa­tion of car­ried-for­ward busi­ness loss­es will be capped at 75 per cent of charge­able prof­its in any in­come year to yield $430 mil­lion, the Un­em­ploy­ment Levy on pe­tro­le­um com­pa­ny prof­its will rise from 5 to 8 per cent to gen­er­ate $155 mil­lion, and an elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge of 5 cents per kilo­watt-hour will be ap­plied to res­i­den­tial pow­er con­sump­tion ex­ceed­ing 3,000 kilo­watt-hours per billing pe­ri­od to fund low-in­come util­i­ty re­lief.

At the same time, lo­cal bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­ers were of­fered re­lief through a 25 per cent re­duc­tion in ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol, bal­anced by an ad val­orem cus­toms regime on for­eign al­co­hol im­ports.

Re­fin­ery restart and new gas projects

Turn­ing to the eco­nom­ic en­gine of the na­tion, Tan­coo sig­nalled a re­vival of the en­er­gy land­scape, re­port­ing that ne­go­ti­a­tions are ac­tive­ly ad­vanc­ing for a phased, com­mer­cial­ly vi­able restart of the Guaracara Re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre with short­list­ed in­vestors.

He de­tailed a pipeline of new up­stream nat­ur­al gas projects slat­ed for first de­liv­ery through­out 2027, in­clud­ing bpTT’s Gin­ger, Ma­hogany A Ex­tend­ed, Ju­niper Phase II, and Shell’s Man­a­tee Plus, along­side a pro­ject­ed US$2.3 bil­lion in up­stream cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture across the sec­tor next year.

Health, ed­u­ca­tion lead al­lo­ca­tions

Sec­toral al­lo­ca­tions saw the Min­istry of Health re­ceive the largest al­lo­ca­tion at $8.061 bil­lion, close­ly fol­lowed by Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing at $8.033 bil­lion, and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty at $7.321 bil­lion.

To­ba­go re­ceived a to­tal bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of $3.473 bil­lion, or 5.48 per cent of the na­tion­al en­ve­lope, com­pris­ing $2.756 bil­lion di­rect­ly al­lo­cat­ed to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and $716.5 mil­lion in spend­ing ex­e­cut­ed via cen­tral min­istries.

New sav­ings and in­vest­ment pro­grammes

In a fur­ther move to widen do­mes­tic sav­ings and in­vest­ment chan­nels, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter dis­closed plans for a Re­tail Gov­ern­ment Se­cu­ri­ties Pro­gramme and a Gov­ern­ment Sav­ings Bond Pro­gramme, of­fer­ing elec­tron­ic, trade­able se­cu­ri­ties in de­nom­i­na­tions as low as TT$1,000 and TT$5,000 in both lo­cal and US dol­lars.

Govt promis­es sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic re­new­al

Clos­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Min­is­ter Tan­coo as­sert­ed that the ad­min­is­tra­tion had laid the ground­work to lift na­tion­al con­fi­dence, sta­bilise debt, and di­ver­si­fy in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing, agri­cul­ture, and tourism, main­tain­ing that the 2027 fis­cal pack­age po­si­tions the coun­try firm­ly on a path to sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic re­new­al.