The pri­vate sec­tor is call­ing for greater con­sul­ta­tion with the gov­ern­ment as there con­tin­ues to be un­cer­tain­ty about pol­i­cy di­rec­tion.

This was one of the ma­jor sug­ges­tions put for­ward by the Busi­ness Out­look In­dex Q4 2025, which was a sur­vey done by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TT Cham­ber) in part­ner­ship with the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness (ALJGSB).

The find­ing that most ex­ec­u­tives are “not sure” which ar­eas the new gov­ern­ment will pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­ence, points to un­cer­tain­ty around pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, sig­nalling the need for clear­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion and stronger pub­lic–pri­vate en­gage­ment.”

This led to the first of two pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions made by the BOI, which stat­ed, ‘Strength­en pub­lic–pri­vate di­a­logue to re­duce pol­i­cy un­cer­tain­ty.’

The BOI rec­om­men­da­tion stat­ed, “Giv­en the high share of ex­ec­u­tives who are un­sure about gov­ern­ment di­rec­tion, struc­tured en­gage­ment chan­nels—such as quar­ter­ly con­sul­ta­tions, sec­tor round­ta­bles, and for­mal pub­lic-pri­vate task forces—should be in­sti­tu­tion­alised. This would im­prove pre­dictabil­i­ty, en­hance trust, and en­sure that re­forms con­sid­er busi­ness re­al­i­ties.”

This call for greater con­sul­ta­tion has come in a week where com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist and Mus­lim cler­ic Iman Rasheed Karim urged the gov­ern­ment to have con­sul­ta­tion talks be­fore im­ple­ment­ing the pro­posed land­lord tax and with­in weeks of the T&T Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion ask­ing for meet­ing con­cern­ing venue bans for Car­ni­val.

The sec­ond pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tion from the BOI reads, “Sup­port sec­tor-spe­cif­ic ad­just­ments fol­low­ing the ex­cise du­ty in­creas­es.”

This bul­let point stat­ed, “Giv­en the sig­nif­i­cant shift in the food ser­vices hir­ing out­look: Gov­ern­ment could tem­porar­i­ly en­hance VAT re­fund pro­cess­ing; in­tro­duce pro­duc­tiv­i­ty or digi­ti­sa­tion grants for SMEs in hos­pi­tal­i­ty; en­cour­age di­a­logue with man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors to mit­i­gate price shocks.”

This pol­i­cy is di­rect­ly linked to find­ings in the BOI which out­lined how pol­i­cy changes di­rect­ly im­pact­ed the ac­com­mo­da­tion and food ser­vice sec­tor, which even prompt­ed a re-is­sue of the sur­vey af­ter the bud­get an­nounce­ment that ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co had in­creased.

Pri­or to that in­crease, ac­com­mo­da­tion and food ser­vices was ear­marked to have the high­est in­crease in em­ploy­ment with a pro­ject­ed 75 per cent in­crease in the short-term six-month pe­ri­od and a sim­i­lar 75 per cent in­crease over the medi­um term or 12-month pe­ri­od.

Grow­ing con­fi­dence in the sec­tor was high­light­ed by in­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion in this year’s Trinidad and To­ba­go Restau­rant week, with over 100 es­tab­lish­ments, rang­ing from cosy cafés to lux­u­ry fine din­ing venues and un­con­ven­tion­al play­ers like bowl­ing al­leys, ho­tels, and even tour boats of­fer­ing cu­rat­ed food ex­pe­ri­ences.

This was cou­pled with a surge of hir­ing for that event with an ex­pec­ta­tion that mo­men­tum would con­tin­ue, but post bud­get there was a re­ver­sal.

The re­port con­firmed that the above re­sults were col­lect­ed be­fore the bud­get state­ment 2026 be­fore the in­crease in al­co­hol and to­bac­co prices due to the im­po­si­tion of the ex­cise du­ty. When the sur­vey was re-dis­trib­uted to get a sense of the im­pact of the price in­creas­es on the Food Ser­vices sec­tor, the re­sults stat­ed that fol­low­ing the in­crease in prices, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the sec­tor would in­crease em­ploy­ment had re­duced or there would be no change at least with­in the next 6 months.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank’s Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port (MPR) for No­vem­ber 2025 which was re­leased on Thurs­day, De­cem­ber 11, it was not­ed that job loss­es oc­curred with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, so­cial and per­son­al ser­vices (9,600 jobs), and whole­sale and re­tail trade, restau­rants and ho­tels (6,900 jobs) sec­tors.

The MPR al­so not­ed the dip in ac­tiv­i­ty in the food and bev­er­age sec­tor in terms of sales al­so led to a con­trac­tion in whole­sale and re­tail point of sale ac­tiv­i­ty for the pe­ri­od record­ed in the MPC.

The re­port stat­ed, “This de­cline pri­mar­i­ly re­flect­ed ob­served dips in the out­put from the food, bev­er­ages and to­bac­co prod­ucts (-0.6 per cent) sub-sec­tor. “

The MPC did high­light that the ex­cise in­crease would have shock ef­fects on var­i­ous sec­tors.

It stat­ed, “The in­crease in du­ties on al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co by dou­ble the amount and the in­tro­duc­tion of cus­toms du­ty and VAT on elec­tric ve­hi­cles are ex­pect­ed to add some im­pe­tus to prices. Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, the re­tail prices of rum, beers and cig­a­rettes have in­creased. Sec­ond-round im­pacts from the in­crease in al­co­hol and cig­a­rettes on re­lat­ed in­dus­tries such as the ho­tels, cafés and restau­rants, and recre­ation and cul­ture are al­so like­ly giv­en high­er in­put costs.”

The BOI stat­ed, “The up­dat­ed food ser­vices da­ta il­lus­trates how do­mes­tic pol­i­cy shocks—such as the in­crease in ex­cise du­ties—can sharply al­ter hir­ing ex­pec­ta­tions, demon­strat­ing the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of cer­tain sec­tors to cost-dri­ven pres­sures.

How­ev­er, both the BOI and the MPC had a rel­a­tive­ly op­ti­mistic out­look with re­gard to em­ploy­ment in the com­ing year.

The MPC said, “Sev­er­al mea­sures an­nounced in the bud­get sup­port the em­ploy­ment-growth nexus. The es­tab­lish­ment of a $475.0 mil­lion em­ploy­ment fund to dri­ve job cre­ation; job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cis­es aimed at reg­u­lar­is­ing con­tract work­ers; youth train­ing pro­grams; and tar­get­ed sup­port for small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) along­side in­no­va­tion in­cu­ba­tors to fos­ter en­tre­pre­neur­ship are ex­pect­ed to have pos­i­tive spillovers for growth and em­ploy­ment.”

The re­port al­so felt the planned ad­just­ment of pub­lic ser­vice salaries could im­prove the spend­ing pow­er of a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the pop­u­la­tion, as it stat­ed, “ Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the pro­posed ad­just­ment to pub­lic sec­tor salaries and the pay­ment of out­stand­ing salary ar­rears are ex­pect­ed to serve a dual pur­pose—align­ing wages with cur­rent stan­dards while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly boost­ing over­all con­sumer spend­ing.”

The BOI stat­ed that while most of its re­spon­dents had a neg­a­tive out­look for the six-month pe­ri­od, it grew more pos­i­tive over a 12-month span.

The BOI not­ed that pri­or to the bud­get and poli­cies in­tro­duced there­after, sev­er­al busi­ness­es have changed their plans in terms of ex­pan­sion in the short to medi­um term.

“The em­ploy­ment out­look, while neu­tral in the near term but im­prov­ing af­ter 12 months, sug­gests firms want to ex­pand but are de­lay­ing labour com­mit­ments un­til eco­nom­ic con­di­tions be­come clear­er,” the BOI said.

In­deed, when sum­maris­ing the key find­ings, the BOI said the pri­vate sec­tor is nav­i­gat­ing short-term strain but demon­strat­ing guard­ed op­ti­mism over the medi­um term.

It stat­ed that more than half of the ex­ec­u­tives who took part in the BOI sur­vey re­port­ed wors­ened fi­nan­cial per­for­mance in the last six months, but they had re­mained con­fi­dent about fi­nan­cial and in­vest­ment prospects for both the next six and 12-month hori­zons.