In this space, in the Busi­ness Guardian pub­li­ca­tion of Oc­to­ber 16, this jour­nal­ist wrote a com­men­tary head­lined ‘Is Govt plan­ning to bor­row $19B in 2026?’ That com­men­tary orig­i­nat­ed be­cause when I went look­ing for the Draft Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue 2026 on the night of Oc­to­ber 13, which was the same day that Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo de­liv­ered the fis­cal pack­age for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, it was not avail­able on the web­site of the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Per­haps by in­stinct, when the doc­u­ment was found on Oc­to­ber 14, there was an im­me­di­ate need to find out how much the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to bor­row in the 2026 fi­nan­cial year. It turned out that the amount of mon­ey the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to bor­row in the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year is $18.965 bil­lion.

As the ta­ble on this page in­di­cates, the pro­posed 2026 bor­row­ing is not on­ly the largest in the pe­ri­od 2022 to 2026, it is 17.4 per cent more than the sec­ond largest bor­row­ing amount, which is the re­vised es­ti­mate of $16.149 bil­lion in the 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

As out­lined in the Oc­to­ber 16 com­men­tary, the Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to com­mit T&T to do­mes­tic bor­row­ing of $8.111 bil­lion and for­eign bor­row­ing of $10.853 bil­lion (US$1.607 bil­lion). The for­eign bor­row­ing is 35.1 per cent more than the next high­est bor­row­ing num­ber in 2024.

What is very cu­ri­ous is that Mr Tan­coo did not ad­dress the is­sue of T&T bor­row­ing $18.965 bil­lion in his 2026 bud­get speech. Sub­ject to cor­rec­tion, I do not think he ad­dressed the is­sue in the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ei­ther. And, sad­ly, on­ly Op­po­si­tion MP Bri­an Man­ning, men­tioned the is­sue briefly in hs con­tri­bu­tion ot the 2026 bud­get de­bate.

But the is­sue of the $18.965 pro­posed bor­row­ing in the 2026 fi­nan­cial year, is so im­por­tant that it MUST be ad­dressed by the Gov­ern­ment soon­er rather than lat­er. If not, there are oth­er in­sti­tu­tons, such as the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and the rat­ing agen­cies, that are go­ing to ad­dress it for T&T. And when they do, it is un­like­ly to be pleas­ant.

So the ques­tions re­main:

1) Why does the Gov­ern­ment pro­pose to bor­row $18.965 bil­lion in the cur­rent 2026 fi­nan­cial year?;

2) What does it pro­pose to bor­row to bor­row that huge sum of mon­ey for?

3) What would bor­row­ing $18.965 bil­lion in the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year do to T&T’s debt ser­vice ra­tios?

4) What im­pact would bor­row­ing $18.965 bil­lion ac­tu­al­ly have on the coun­try’s fis­cal deficit po­si­tion and, even more im­por­tant­ly, on the ag­gre­gate de­mand for for­eign ex­change in T&T?

My ini­tial think­ing, out­lined in the Oc­to­ber 16 com­men­tary, was:

“The first, and most ob­vi­ous sup­po­si­tion, is that much of the $18.965 bil­lion the Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to bor­row in the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year would go to fund the 10 per cent wage in­crease to em­ploy­ees in the pub­lic ser­vice. This is a promise Mr Tan­coo said will be de­liv­ered.

“In fur­ther­ance of the con­clu­sion of ne­go­ti­a­tions for the civ­il ser­vice, statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) for the pe­ri­ods 2014-2016 and 2017-2019, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter has in­struct­ed me to ad­vise the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) to sub­mit a re­vised of­fer of 10 per cent,” he said.

But Mr Tan­coo added, “I wish to ad­vise the mem­bers of the teach­ing ser­vice, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, and the Port of Spain and San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tions that this Gov­ern­ment will rat­i­fy the Col­lec­tive Agree­ments signed in April 2025 be­tween the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and their re­spec­tive As­so­ci­a­tions/Union/Com­mit­tee.

“The re­cur­rent cost of im­ple­ment­ing these agree­ments is es­ti­mat­ed at $214 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, with ar­rears of $730 mil­lion as of De­cem­ber 2025.”

One of the ear­ly read­ers of that piece stat­ed:

“There is no al­lo­ca­tion for the pub­lic ser­vants 10%+ be­cause gov­ern­ment ac­counts are pro­duced and re­port­ed on a cash ba­sis and not on an ac­cru­al ba­sis. Even if they used ac­cru­al ac­count­ing, be­cause the ne­go­ti­a­tions have (strate­gi­cal­ly) just be­gun, it is dif­fi­cult to know where the amount will end up. In fact if the ne­go­ti­a­tions are pro­longed, it may not be paid this fis­cal year at all!

“What is in this year’s num­bers are those wage agree­ments which have been fi­nalised and the Salary Re­view Com­mis­sion ad­just­ments from ear­li­er this cal­en­dar year.”

In the bud­get doc­u­ment Draft Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture, the cur­rent ad­min­stra­tion projects that it would spend $9.403 bil­lion in debt ser­vic­ing. Of that amount, $7.675 bil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed to charges on ac­count of the pub­lic debt and $1.728 bil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

With re­gard to charges on ac­count of the pub­lic debt, that doc­u­ment es­ti­mates the fol­low­ing:

* A to­tal of $3.002 bil­lion to be spent on in­ter­est on lo­cal loans;

* Some $1.476 bil­lion to be spent on in­ter­est on for­eign loans;

* An es­ti­mat­ed $153.896 mil­lion in sink­ing fund con­tri­bu­tions;

* Lo­cal prin­ci­pal re­pay­ments of $1.720 bil­lion;

* For­eign prin­ci­pal re­pay­ments of $1.076 bil­lion;

* In­ter­est on lo­cal notes, deben­ture and oth­er of $186.774 mil­lion; and

* Man­age­ment fees and ex­pens­es of $58.845 mil­lion

* To­tal of $7.675 bil­lion.

The doc­u­ment en­vis­ages that T&T would pay a to­tal of $4.724 bil­lion in in­ter­est and a $2.951 bil­lion in cap­i­tal re­pay­ment and sink­ing fund con­tri­bu­tions of $2.951 bil­lion.

There is no ex­pla­na­tion in the Draft Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture 2026, that I could find for the $1.728 bil­lion in debt ser­vic­ing al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

High­er debt-to-GDP ra­tio?

So, if the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­pos­es to bor­row $18.965 bil­lion in the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, and a to­tal of $7.675 bil­lion is to be spent on in­ter­est pay­ments and the re­pay­ment of debt prin­ci­pal, that should mean that $11.290 bil­lion is “new” debt.

T&T’s to­tal ad­just­ed gen­er­al gov­ern­ment debt at the end of June 2025 was $147.89 bil­lion, which was equal to a debt-to-GDP ra­tio of 85.1 per cent. If the “new” debt of $11.290 bil­lion is added to the June debt of $147.899 bil­lion, an es­ti­mate of the to­tal debt at the end of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year, on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2026, would be $159.189 bil­lion. All things be­ing equal, that back-of-the-en­ve­lope ex­er­cise could fore­shad­owan in­crease in T&T’s debt-to-GDP ra­tio close to 92 per cent by the end of the cur­rent fi­nan­cial years

And that is as­sum­ing that every­one of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s rev­enue pro­jec­tions—es­pe­cial­ly the es­ti­mate of rev­enue to be col­lect­ed from the en­er­gy sec­tor, based on oil and nat­ur­al gas as­sump­tions that most in­de­pen­dent an­a­lysts be­lieve are too high—come to pass.

In de­liv­er­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2026 bud­get de­bate, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor, Vish­nu Dhan­paul, de­scribed the pro­jec­tions made in the 2026 bud­get as “high­ly un­re­al­is­tic,” ar­gu­ing that the bud­get would be de­railed ear­ly in the new cal­en­dar year.

“This bud­get will col­lapse short­ly, un­der the weight of du­bi­ous as­sump­tions, and ex­treme­ly cre­ative ac­count­ing...It would col­lapse and would need to be re­cal­i­brat­ed with­in the first quar­ter of the new cal­en­dar year,” said Dhan­paul, who spent a short time as T&T’s min­is­ter of fi­nance ear­li­er this year, but a much longer time as the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

It is clear that part of the rea­son the Gov­ern­ment wants to bor­row close to $19 bil­lion is that it wants to ful­fil many of the promis­es it made dur­ing the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, es­pe­cial­ly the in­crease of at least 10 per cent to pub­lic ser­vants. But can the coun­try af­ford af­ford to kep the promise to pub­lic ser­vants?