On Mon­day, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will present the 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get. There will be the usu­al fo­cus on the mea­sures an­nounced, the tax­es ad­just­ed, the in­cen­tives of­fered, the pro­grammes fund­ed and the projects promised. In our en­thu­si­asm to get to these mat­ters, we of­ten for­get to an­a­lyze the econ­o­my that the min­is­ter is ac­tu­al­ly bud­get­ing for.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGL) pro­duc­tion in­creased for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year in 2025, ex­tend­ing a re­cov­ery from the low­est lev­el record­ed in the En­er­gy In­sti­tute’s 2015–2025 se­ries.

Every year, over the last four years, Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture has ex­ceed­ed rev­enue by sev­er­al bil­lion dol­lars. The forth­com­ing bud­get 2027 is not ex­pect­ed to be any dif­fer­ent. At a time when the coun­try con­tin­ues to face sig­nif­i­cant fis­cal con­straints, the man­ner in which pub­lic mon­ey is spent as­sumes even greater sig­nif­i­cance.

T&T en­ters the fi­nal week be­fore the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2027 na­tion­al bud­get, fac­ing mount­ing eco­nom­ic pres­sures, with econ­o­mists warn­ing that slow­ing growth, ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages and an econ­o­my still de­pen­dent on de­clin­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion are pos­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges to the coun­try’s long-term prospects.

Se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and fi­nan­cial econ­o­mist Dr Dave Seer­at­tan has high­light­ed sev­er­al pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tors in the do­mes­tic econ­o­my, while cau­tion­ing against ma­jor changes to the coun­try’s ex­change-rate regime as the gov­ern­ment seeks to ad­dress for­eign-ex­change chal­lenges.

The con­struc­tion sec­tor is head­ing in­to Mon­day’s na­tion­al bud­get with con­trac­tors press­ing the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress mil­lions of dol­lars in out­stand­ing pay­ments for com­plet­ed and cer­ti­fied work, warn­ing that pro­longed de­lays are putting busi­ness­es, work­ers and new projects un­der in­creas­ing pres­sure.

Dana-Marie Smith’s ar­ti­cle, The Pro­cure­ment Bill 2026 and the Cost of Weak­ened Ac­count­abil­i­ty, ad­dress­es the amend­ments to sup­pli­er chal­lenges, ex­emp­tions and the cor­rec­tive pow­ers of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion. An­oth­er au­di­ence must pay close at­ten­tion: the Named Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cer.

The surge in well­ness cul­ture in T&T and around the re­gion is be­ing wel­comed by Amare Pro­bi­otics, as it eyes both a lo­cal and re­gion­al busi­ness ex­pan­sion.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my de­clined by 0.5 per cent in 2025 and is pre­dict­ed to de­cline again this year, by 0.2 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the World Bank Group’s Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Eco­nom­ic Up­date.

More than 10 work­ers at Trad­er Jack’s Restau­rant at Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain, have been placed on tem­po­rary lay­off as the busi­ness con­fronts a dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial pe­ri­od.

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was thrown in­to mourn­ing af­ter the sud­den death of Sean Roach, the CEO of Langston Roach In­dus­tries (LRI), late on Sun­day.

For years, I have been build­ing dif­fer­ent pieces of what has now be­come the Digipreneur Net­work.