Gov­ern­ment’s tabling of pro­pos­als in Par­lia­ment this week for $3.1 bil­lion more in pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture, sets the stage for to­day’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, where Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is ex­pect­ed to lay bare the sus­tain­able rev­enue growth strat­e­gy nec­es­sary to pre­vent any fur­ther ‘crash’ of T&T’s econ­o­my.

While blame for this prover­bial bank­rupt­cy has al­ready been put square­ly on the shoul­ders of the last Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment by the min­is­ter, we are yet to hear from him of any ad­just­ed rev­enue pro­jec­tions, al­though we can be guid­ed by the fis­cal 2024 Bud­get, which pro­ject­ed a deficit of $5.517 bil­lion.

There­fore, all things be­ing equal, the sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing cur­rent­ly be­ing re­quest­ed will on­ly serve to widen the over­all bud­get gap to $8.6 bil­lion.

This is why, as he takes cen­tre stage to­day, Min­is­ter Tan­coo is du­ty-bound to present a com­pre­hen­sive, trans­par­ent and ac­tion­able plan for strength­en­ing our do­mes­tic rev­enue po­si­tion.

In its first sev­en weeks in of­fice since as­sum­ing pow­er fol­low­ing the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­ready moved to abol­ish prop­er­ty tax, which had brought in over $135 mil­lion in rev­enue from res­i­den­tial own­ers by May 2025.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), which was due to ful­ly op­er­a­tionalised this year, has al­so been dis­band­ed, al­though it was de­signed to bridge a tax gap es­ti­mat­ed at $10 to $15 bil­lion, in­clud­ing $2 bil­lion in fis­cal year 2026 and a fur­ther $6 bil­lion in 2027.

In the ab­sence of these rev­enue streams, Gov­ern­ment’s al­ter­na­tive ap­proach to in­come gen­er­a­tion needs to be clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed to­day and in the en­su­ing de­bate, even as the Prime Min­is­ter her­self re­mains fo­cused on sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing “un­nec­es­sary ex­pen­di­ture” and redi­rect­ing those funds to­wards es­sen­tial ser­vices.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so plans to utilise the avail­able over­draft at the Cen­tral Bank to re­fi­nance at least 60 per cent of ma­tur­ing trea­sury bills, there­by free­ing up funds. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has fur­ther in­di­cat­ed there will be with­drawals from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, as well as bor­row­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket as need­ed.

While these ac­tions may be deemed es­sen­tial in the short term, Gov­ern­ment must, of ne­ces­si­ty, ar­tic­u­late sus­tain­able long-term fi­nan­cial strate­gies to the pub­lic, as every ex­tra dol­lar spent with­out a cor­re­spond­ing rev­enue gen­er­a­tion adds to the na­tion­al debt and im­pos­es a greater bur­den on fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

While we await that in­for­ma­tion, the na­tion will al­so be keen­ly ob­serv­ing how the ad­di­tion­al $3.1 bil­lion in sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing will be dis­trib­uted, and whether a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion will be di­rect­ed to­wards es­sen­tial cap­i­tal ini­tia­tives that can spur eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and es­tab­lish en­dur­ing as­sets or will main­ly be used to cov­er non-rev­enue yield­ing ex­pen­di­ture.

The in­sights pro­vid­ed dur­ing Mon­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee sug­gest that the added spend­ing will be fo­cused on re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing debts.

Tan­coo, how­ev­er, has more in­for­ma­tion than we do and there­fore is best poised to give a fuller pic­ture of the fi­nan­cial re­al­i­ty fac­ing T&T to­day.

While we do not ex­pect any op­por­tu­ni­ty will be missed by the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment to high­light the short­com­ings of the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, we be­lieve its time would be bet­ter spent, and the coun­try bet­ter served, in the ar­tic­u­la­tion of a clear and work­able plan to pro­vide long-term so­lu­tions to the prob­lems fac­ing T&T.