SoE extension, Finance Bill set for debate today

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A marathon de­bate is ex­pect­ed to­day in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment presents the Fi­nance Bill 2026—con­tain­ing in­creas­es to var­i­ous fines and penal­ties and grant­i­ng cer­tain con­ces­sions—fol­lowed by a mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for an­oth­er three months.

On Fri­day, the House will ex­am­ine the al­lo­ca­tion of $2.93 bil­lion in sup­ple­men­tal bud­get fund­ing for 27 min­istries and di­vi­sions, with the largest al­lo­ca­tions ear­marked for four min­istries.

To­day, the Fi­nance Bill, pi­lot­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo, is ex­pect­ed to be de­bat­ed when the House be­gins sit­ting at 10.30 am.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie will then pi­lot a mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of the Fi­nance Bill de­bate.

The Fi­nance Bill, which gives ef­fect to mea­sures an­nounced in the 2026 Bud­get, pro­pos­es amend­ments to 31 laws.

The min­istry said the Bill in­cludes tax ex­emp­tions for ap­proved pen­sion fund plans and de­ferred an­nu­ity plans, pen­sion re­form for the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices, re­vi­sions to the gam­ing tax and amend­ments to the land­lord sur­charge. The Bill al­so strength­ens crim­i­nal penal­ties across a wide range of of­fences.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly three-quar­ters of the Bill seeks to in­crease fines and penal­ties, cov­er­ing mat­ters rang­ing from over­load­ing par­ty boats to pro­duc­ing co­pra with­out a li­cence.

The SoE, an­nounced on March 3, was due to ex­pire on June 17.

Last Fri­day, a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter, was held. Sub­se­quent­ly, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Min­istry stat­ed on Sun­day that the Coun­cil re­ceived and re­viewed re­ports on the states of emer­gency im­ple­ment­ed be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 and May 2026.

An SoE was in­sti­tut­ed by the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 and March 2025 fol­low­ing a surge in gang war­fare.

The min­istry stat­ed that the re­ports high­light­ed “analy­ses of datasets re­lat­ed to sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al threats to state se­cu­ri­ty.” It said all three SoEs were as­so­ci­at­ed with “mean­ing­ful dis­rup­tions” across all cat­e­gories of datasets re­viewed and analysed.

Af­ter ex­am­in­ing the re­ports and re­ceiv­ing ad­vice from NSC mem­bers, the Min­istry said the Prime Min­is­ter de­cid­ed that Gov­ern­ment would seek par­lia­men­tary ap­proval to ex­tend the SoE for a fur­ther three months.

To­day’s mo­tion states that, where­as it is “nec­es­sary and ex­pe­di­ent,” the Pres­i­dent’s March procla­ma­tion de­clar­ing that a pub­lic state of emer­gency ex­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go should be ex­tend­ed for a fur­ther pe­ri­od not ex­ceed­ing three months.

The ex­ten­sion can be ap­proved with Gov­ern­ment’s votes alone, re­quir­ing on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty.

Any ex­ten­sion be­yond six months would re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty of two-thirds sup­port in both the Sen­ate and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

An ex­ten­sion of the SoE would al­so con­tin­ue the re­cent­ly en­act­ed Emer­gency Pow­ers Or­ders ban­ning protests around 15 lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing Par­lia­ment and the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice.

It would be the UNC Gov­ern­ment’s sec­ond SoE ex­ten­sion. The first SoE, de­clared in Ju­ly 2025, was ex­tend­ed for a fur­ther three months to Jan­u­ary 2026. The cur­rent SoE be­gan short­ly af­ter­wards, on March 3.

Fol­low­ing to­day’s de­bate, the House’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee will meet on Fri­day to ex­am­ine the pro­posed al­lo­ca­tion of the $2.93 bil­lion which Gov­ern­ment is adding to the ex­ist­ing $59.2 bil­lion Bud­get.

Dur­ing com­mit­tee pro­ceed­ings, Op­po­si­tion MPs will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ques­tion min­is­ters on the pro­posed ex­pen­di­tures.

Last week, the Prime Min­is­ter said $2.8 bil­lion of the $2.93 bil­lion would go to­ward set­tled wage and salary in­creas­es for 62,050 work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the PSA, WIGUT, NUGFW, the teach­ing sec­tor, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, the Amal­ga­mat­ed and Con­trac­tors Work­ers Union, and oth­ers.

Gov­ern­ment said the sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing for the 27 min­istries and di­vi­sions is re­quired to meet the fol­low­ing ex­pen­di­ture:

Goods and Ser­vices — $343,046,510

Cur­rent Trans­fers and Sub­si­dies — $1,921,379,338

Cur­rent Trans­fers to Statu­to­ry Boards and Sim­i­lar Bod­ies — $570,199,800

De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme — $92,746,200

Among the 27 di­vi­sions, the high­est sup­ple­men­tal al­lo­ca­tions are pro­posed for:

Pub­lic Util­i­ties — $513.6 mil­lion

Health — $499.9 mil­lion

En­er­gy — $454 mil­lion

Works — $312.9 mil­lion

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is to re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al $63.2 mil­lion, while the De­fence Force is ear­marked for $39.2 mil­lion. The low­est al­lo­ca­tion is for the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, which is set to re­ceive $285,700.

Next Mon­day, Tan­coo is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er the Mid-Year Re­view of the Bud­get, dur­ing which the $2.93 bil­lion sup­ple­men­ta­tion will be for­mal­ly ap­proved.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment is pro­posed to re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al $188.2 mil­lion.

Fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions about in­suf­fi­cient fund­ing to meet pay­roll oblig­a­tions, Ari­ma Deputy May­or Jo­van Roberts said yes­ter­day that the cor­po­ra­tion was close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the al­lo­ca­tion of the sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing.

He said the Fi­nance Min­istry had in­struct­ed the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion to vire suf­fi­cient funds from its wages al­lo­ca­tion to cov­er salaries for June.

“Once we re­ceive ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tion in the Mid-Year Re­view, we can re­im­burse our wages vote,” Roberts said.

He added that the vire­ment was ap­proved on Tues­day dur­ing a spe­cial coun­cil meet­ing.

“I can on­ly as­sume that with what­ev­er is al­lo­cat­ed in Mon­day’s Mid-Year Re­view, our cor­po­ra­tion’s salaries and wages, and those of all oth­er cor­po­ra­tions, are in­clud­ed in this and are suf­fi­cient to see us through to the end of the fis­cal year. Any­thing oth­er than that will be com­plete mis­man­age­ment and gaslight­ing,” Roberts stressed.