Tancoo assures: Relief coming for nurses, teachers in 2027 Budget

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has as­sured nurs­es, teach­ers and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor work­ers still await­ing the con­clu­sion of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions that fi­nan­cial re­lief is on the way. How­ev­er, the nec­es­sary mon­e­tary al­lo­ca­tion will be made in the 2026/2027 bud­get pack­age.

Pi­lot­ing the mo­tion for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to adopt the re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee this morn­ing, Tan­coo said pro­vi­sions for out­stand­ing wage set­tle­ments would be in­clud­ed in the 2027 Bud­get once on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions and cal­cu­la­tions are com­plet­ed.

Ad­dress­ing work­ers anx­ious­ly await­ing set­tle­ments, Tan­coo said Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to ho­n­our­ing its oblig­a­tions.

“I want to tell nurs­es, teach­ers and who­ev­er else that are cur­rent­ly at the bar­gain­ing ta­ble or are await­ing fi­nal­i­sa­tion that re­lief is com­ing,” he said.

“The doc­u­men­ta­tions are be­ing pro­vid­ed now, and in fis­cal 2027 the rel­e­vant ap­pro­pri­a­tions will be made.”

His as­sur­ance came as Gov­ern­ment sought par­lia­men­tary ap­proval for $2.927 bil­lion in sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing to cov­er re­cur­rent and de­vel­op­ment ex­pen­di­ture through Sep­tem­ber 30.

Tan­coo ar­gued that the re­quest re­flect­ed an ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­tive­ly im­ple­ment­ing projects and pro­grammes rather than mere­ly mak­ing promis­es.

“We are sup­ple­ment­ing be­cause we are de­liv­er­ing,” he said.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter al­so paint­ed a rel­a­tive­ly op­ti­mistic pic­ture of the coun­try's fis­cal per­for­mance, re­veal­ing that stronger-than-an­tic­i­pat­ed en­er­gy prices and im­proved rev­enue col­lec­tion mea­sures were ex­pect­ed to boost Gov­ern­ment in­come dur­ing the re­main­der of the fis­cal year.

The 2026 Bud­get was based on an av­er­age oil price of US$73.25 per bar­rel and nat­ur­al gas prices of US$4.25 per MMB­TU. How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment now ex­pects oil prices to av­er­age ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$85 per bar­rel and nat­ur­al gas prices around US$4.50 per MMB­TU by the end of the fis­cal year.

As a re­sult, Tan­coo said to­tal rev­enue is pro­ject­ed to in­crease by ap­prox­i­mate­ly $381.7 mil­lion.

For the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2025 to April 30, 2026, Gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $30.1 bil­lion in rev­enue, ex­ceed­ing the orig­i­nal pro­jec­tion of $28 bil­lion. Ex­pen­di­ture dur­ing the same pe­ri­od amount­ed to $31.8 bil­lion, be­low the pro­ject­ed $34.5 bil­lion, re­sult­ing in a fis­cal deficit of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.7 bil­lion.

De­spite the ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture be­ing sought, Tan­coo said Gov­ern­ment was mak­ing steady progress in im­prov­ing the coun­try's fis­cal po­si­tion.

He re­port­ed that the over­all fis­cal deficit in­her­it­ed from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had been re­duced from $10.07 bil­lion, equiv­a­lent to 5.8 per cent of GDP, to $7.01 bil­lion, or rough­ly four per cent of GDP.

In­ter­est pay­ments on pub­lic debt have al­so de­clined from $7.13 bil­lion to $6.91 bil­lion, free­ing up re­sources for pub­lic ser­vices and de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives.

How­ev­er, Tan­coo placed par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on what econ­o­mists de­scribe as the pri­ma­ry bal­ance, the dif­fer­ence be­tween Gov­ern­ment's rev­enue and non-in­ter­est ex­pen­di­ture.

He said the pri­ma­ry deficit had fall­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly from $2.93 bil­lion un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $101 mil­lion.

“In just one year this Gov­ern­ment has re­duced the pri­ma­ry deficit by more than $2.8 bil­lion, bring­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to the thresh­old of pri­ma­ry bal­ance fol­low­ing con­sec­u­tive years of pri­ma­ry deficits,” he said.

“This is more than an ac­count­ing im­prove­ment. It is the foun­da­tion of a stronger and much more re­silient econ­o­my.”

Tan­coo al­so high­light­ed what he de­scribed as ev­i­dence of stronger fis­cal dis­ci­pline and im­proved man­age­ment of the coun­try's fi­nan­cial re­serves.

He re­port­ed that the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund had grown from US$5.98 bil­lion at the end of April 2025 to US$6.6 bil­lion as of June 4, 2026, an in­crease of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$620 mil­lion in one year.

“That is dis­ci­pline. That is eco­nom­ic man­age­ment,” he said.

“This is a Gov­ern­ment pro­tect­ing the peo­ple to­day while al­so pro­tect­ing the coun­try's fu­ture.”

The Min­is­ter al­so point­ed to the ear­ly suc­cess of sev­er­al rev­enue mea­sures in­tro­duced in the Oc­to­ber 2025 Bud­get.

Ac­cord­ing to Tan­coo, the com­mer­cial bank as­set levy, elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge, land­lord reg­is­tra­tion fee and busi­ness sur­charge have al­ready gen­er­at­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $224 mil­lion since their im­ple­men­ta­tion in Jan­u­ary.

He said those mea­sures formed part of a broad­er rev­enue re­form agen­da de­signed to im­prove col­lec­tion and strength­en long-term fis­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Among the ini­tia­tives now un­der way are the mod­erni­sa­tion of the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, im­prove­ments to ICT sys­tems, the es­tab­lish­ment of a Re­al Es­tate In­vest­ment Trust and prepa­ra­tions for the launch of a third Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund bond lat­er this year.

He said gov­ern­ment is al­so ad­vanc­ing trans­fer pric­ing leg­is­la­tion aimed at im­prov­ing tax com­pli­ance and strength­en­ing for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that some of the re­forms are still in their im­ple­men­ta­tion phase, Tan­coo said their full ben­e­fits would be­come more ev­i­dent dur­ing fis­cal 2027 and be­yond.

The sup­ple­men­tary ap­pro­pri­a­tion it­self con­tains al­lo­ca­tions across a wide range of min­istries and agen­cies.

Among the largest re­cur­rent al­lo­ca­tions are $499.9 mil­lion for the Min­istry of Health, $454 mil­lion for fu­el sub­sidy li­a­bil­i­ties owed to NP and Unipet, $362.9 mil­lion for the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, $197.3 mil­lion for Hous­ing, $179.2 mil­lion for Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and $97.7 mil­lion for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al fund­ing is al­so ear­marked for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, the Ju­di­cia­ry, the Min­istry of De­fence and sev­er­al so­cial ser­vice agen­cies.

On the de­vel­op­ment side, Gov­ern­ment is propos­ing an ad­di­tion­al $30 mil­lion for the ac­qui­si­tion of lap­tops for Form One stu­dents, $25 mil­lion for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Tier Four da­ta cen­tre, $15 mil­lion for re­con­struc­tion work at Scar­bor­ough Sec­ondary School and al­most $9 mil­lion for drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion projects.

Tan­coo said the ad­di­tion­al spend­ing would be fi­nanced through a com­bi­na­tion of do­mes­tic and ex­ter­nal bor­row­ing, in­clud­ing sup­port from mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment in­sti­tu­tions.

He ar­gued that the coun­try's eco­nom­ic man­age­ment was al­ready earn­ing in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, point­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go's suc­cess­ful US$1 bil­lion bond is­sue, its re­moval from the Eu­ro­pean Union's list of non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions, pos­i­tive en­gage­ment with in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and a re­cent re­vi­sion of the coun­try's out­look by Moody's from neg­a­tive to sta­ble.

But while much of his pre­sen­ta­tion fo­cused on Gov­ern­ment's fis­cal per­for­mance and spend­ing pri­or­i­ties, Tan­coo be­gan his con­tri­bu­tion with a scathing as­sess­ment of the decade-long Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion that pre­ced­ed the UNC's re­turn to of­fice.

He ac­cused the for­mer gov­ern­ment of leav­ing be­hind weak­ened in­sti­tu­tions, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture, rev­enue col­lec­tion agen­cies plagued by un­der­in­vest­ment, and a fis­cal po­si­tion that re­quired ur­gent cor­rec­tion.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter ar­gued that years of mis­man­age­ment, cor­rup­tion and poor plan­ning had sti­fled eco­nom­ic growth and squan­dered op­por­tu­ni­ties for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

“The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go did not vote for man­age­ment of de­cline,” he said.

“They vot­ed for re­new­al. They vot­ed for com­pe­tent lead­er­ship, and they vot­ed for a gov­ern­ment pre­pared to do the dif­fi­cult work of re­build­ing a na­tion that had been held back for far too long.”

Tan­coo main­tained that while the task of re­build­ing the econ­o­my re­mained chal­leng­ing, the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion was al­ready demon­strat­ing that a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to gov­er­nance was pro­duc­ing re­sults.

“We are fix­ing it,” he de­clared.

And with near­ly $3 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al spend­ing now be­fore Par­lia­ment, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue in­vest­ing in pub­lic ser­vices, ho­n­our­ing its com­mit­ments to work­ers and pur­su­ing what he de­scribed as a path to­ward fis­cal sta­bil­i­ty, eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and re­newed na­tion­al con­fi­dence.