Mixed Budget bag from Tancoo

GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

There was a mixed 2027 Bud­get bag yes­ter­day, with Gov­ern­ment giv­ing and tak­ing.

Se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sion and oth­er grants will be in­creased by $250 in 2027, tax­a­tion on lo­cal­ly pro­duced al­co­hol will be re­duced and the Forex thresh­old will be in­creased to US$10,000.

But 2027 will al­so bring a high­er “lux­u­ry” tax on im­port­ed al­co­hol - and an elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge for high con­sump­tion res­i­den­tial house­holds.

These were among mea­sures in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s $63.368 bil­lion Bud­get for 2027.

“We recog­nise that much re­mains to be done,” Tan­coo said yes­ter­day in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“Progress must be ac­cel­er­at­ed, im­ple­men­ta­tion strength­ened and re­sults felt more di­rect­ly in cit­i­zens’ homes and com­mu­ni­ties. This bud­get marks the next phase of our na­tion­al agen­da - to at­tract in­vest­ment, ex­pand pro­duc­tion, cre­ate em­ploy­ment, strength­en re­silience and open new op­por­tu­ni­ties for cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es. We promised, we de­liv­ered - more to come!”

In his two-and-a-half-hour ad­dress, Tan­coo de­liv­ered a bud­get themed “A Peo­ple-Cen­tered Ap­proach: In­vest­ing in Com­mu­ni­ties, Trans­form­ing the Econ­o­my and Se­cur­ing a Sus­tain­able Fu­ture.”

It was topped by 35 fis­cal mea­sures com­pris­ing con­ces­sions, im­prove­ments, penal­ties and in­creased con­di­tions for some ar­eas, in­clud­ing busi­ness.

The $63.368B Bud­get was larg­er than Tan­coo’s 2026 pack­age, which was $59.232B.

The 2027 Bud­get is now Trinidad and To­ba­go’s largest. Its size is slight­ly more than the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment’s 2016 Bud­get, which was $63.048B due main­ly to pay­ing $5B in ar­rears to pub­lic ser­vants.

The bud­get is based on a pro­ject­ed oil price of US$77.00 per bar­rel, com­pared with US$73.25 per bar­rel in 2026. The nat­ur­al gas price ba­sis for 2027 is pro­ject­ed at US$5 per MMB­tu, com­pared with US$4.25 per MMB­tu in 2026.

Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing re­ceived the biggest al­lo­ca­tion among min­istries - $8.033B.

To­ba­go re­ceived $3.473B, or 5.48 per cent of the Bud­get.

Among pos­i­tives, Tan­coo said the last time Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion was in­creased was 12 years ago, un­der then-Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

He added, “To­day, this Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment will in­crease the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Grant by $250 per month from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027, putting more mon­ey in­to the pock­ets of 124,000 se­nior cit­i­zens.”

He said the Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant will be in­creased by $250 in each tier, ben­e­fit­ing 13,637 re­cip­i­ents, and the Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant for adults and el­i­gi­ble chil­dren will al­so be in­creased by $250, ben­e­fit­ing 28,000

“More than 10 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion will ben­e­fit from these grants, which cost a to­tal of $555 mil­lion. These in­creas­es will put more mon­ey di­rect­ly in­to the hands of those who need it the most ... We promised. We de­liv­ered. More to come!”

Af­ter ex­empt­ing pri­vate pen­sions from tax last year, Tan­coo yes­ter­day said 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 T&T and de­serve greater fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty in re­tire­ment. I pro­pose to in­crease the Per­son­al Al­lowance for pen­sion­ers from $90,000 to $102,000 per year from Jan­u­ary 1.”

Tan­coo said Gov­ern­ment be­lieves the ex­ist­ing US$5,000 for­eign cur­ren­cy de­c­la­ra­tion thresh­old should be up­dat­ed to bet­ter re­flect present-day trav­el and com­mer­cial re­al­i­ties, while al­low­ing Cus­toms to re­main fo­cused on high­er-risk move­ments of cur­ren­cy.

“I pro­pose to in­crease the for­eign cur­ren­cy de­c­la­ra­tion thresh­old from US$5,000 to US$10,000.”

Tan­coo de­tailed al­lo­ca­tions with­in a to­tal of $2.5B to cov­er ar­rears to cur­rent/re­tired pub­lic of­fi­cers af­fil­i­at­ed to the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers’ Union and in the Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tions and the T&T De­fence Force

On the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Tan­coo said 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.”

Gov­ern­ment in­tends en­gag­ing oth­er unions with un­re­solved ne­go­ti­a­tions, in­clud­ing the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union, the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers’ Union, T&T Postal Work­ers’ Union and the Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union.

Tan­coo an­nounced the in­tro­duc­tion, from Jan­u­ary 1, of an elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge of five cents per kilo­watt-hour on res­i­den­tial con­sump­tion above 3,000 kilo­watt-hours per billing pe­ri­od.

“This thresh­old will en­sure av­er­age house­holds with mod­er­ate lev­els of elec­tric­i­ty us­age re­main un­af­fect­ed; 90 per cent of house­holds fall be­low the thresh­old. So, this will af­fect 10 per cent of ser­vices us­ing more than av­er­age amount of elec­tric­i­ty,” he said.

On changes to tax­a­tion on al­co­holic bev­er­ages, Tan­coo said, “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 State’s rev­enues. I pro­pose to re­duce the ap­plic­a­ble ex­cise rates by 25 per cent.”

Tan­coo said the re­vised ex­cise rates ex­tend to im­port­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages, es­tab­lish­ing a more con­sis­tent ex­cise treat­ment be­tween lo­cal­ly pro­duced and im­port­ed prod­ucts.

He said Gov­ern­ment will al­so re­form the Cus­toms du­ty struc­ture on im­port­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages by mov­ing from the ex­ist­ing spe­cif­ic du­ties charged by vol­ume to rates based on prod­uct val­ue.

Tan­coo said, “This means lux­u­ry items will now at­tract high­er du­ty - cham­pagne will cost more than reg­u­lar items; this is a lux­u­ry tax.

“It af­fects im­port­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages which don’t ben­e­fit from pref­er­en­tial cus­toms treat­ment un­der T&T’s ex­ist­ing trade agree­ments, with high­er-val­ue im­ports bear­ing high­er Cus­toms du­ty.

“These mea­sures will pro­vide some re­lief to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers, es­tab­lish greater con­sis­ten­cy in ap­pli­ca­tion of Cus­toms du­ties, cre­at­ing a more ap­pro­pri­ate cus­toms du­ty struc­ture for im­port­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages.”

Al­so, the pos­ses­sion of 10,000 or more to­bac­co prod­ucts will now con­sti­tute pri­ma fa­cie ev­i­dence of dis­tri­b­u­tion. The im­por­ta­tion of 800 or more cig­a­rettes will re­quire an ap­pro­pri­ate im­port li­cence, he said. A 20 per cent Cus­toms du­ty rate will ap­ply to va­p­ing de­vices/prod­ucts.

Tan­coo said fol­low­ing re­ceipt of the com­pre­hen­sive re­port of the Re­fin­ery Restart Com­mit­tee, Gov­ern­ment is eval­u­at­ing pro­pos­als from a short­list of se­ri­ous lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors.

Say­ing Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts will cre­ate a “job boom,” Tan­coo said Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion and Ibis Steel - which will re­fur­bish the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal plant - are tar­get­ing first pro­duc­tion for the end of 2027, with 1,000 new per­ma­nent jobs ex­pect­ed. “We have 45 po­ten­tial projects val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$2.17 bil­lion in our in­vest­ment pipeline at var­i­ous stages of readi­ness. These have the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate over 7,100 new jobs, strength­en­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and fu­ture Forex earn­ings.”

Tan­coo de­tailed Gov­ern­ment’s achieve­ments paint­ing an op­ti­mistic eco­nom­ic pic­ture.

The Bud­get de­bate con­tin­ues from 9.30 am on Fri­day with Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les’ re­ply.

BUD­GET 2027 NUM­BERS

• To­tal Ex­pen­di­ture: $63.368 bil­lion

• To­tal Rev­enue: $59.729B

• Fis­cal Deficit: $3.639B

The to­tal es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue of $59.729B com­pris­es:

• Oil rev­enue $14.355B

• Non-oil rev­enue $ 45.062B

• Cap­i­tal rev­enue $ 0.312 B

Re­vised es­ti­mate for Fis­cal 2026 projects a deficit of $7B with rev­enue of $54.247B and ex­pen­di­ture of $61.247B- con­sis­tent with the Mid-Year re­view es­ti­mates.

HIGH­EST MIN­ISTRY AL­LO­CA­TIONS

• Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing $8.033B

• Health $8.061B

• Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty $7.321B

• Pub­lic Util­i­ties $4.087B

• In­fra­struc­ture $2.081B

• Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment $ 2.323B

• Trans­port $1.712B

• Agri­cul­ture $0.987B

• Hous­ing $0.904B

Oth­er key ar­eas

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.

Net Of­fi­cial Re­serves stand at US$5.4 bil­lion, equiv­a­lent to 6.2 months of im­port cov­er.

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.

In 2026 -

• 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 $1.23B 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.