The sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ing of the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment has been reaf­firmed by Caribbean In­for­ma­tion & Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Cari­CRIS) last month.

A re­lease from the Min­istry of Fi­nance on Fri­day stat­ed that the re­gion­al cred­it rat­ing agency, reaf­firmed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­vest­ment-grade cred­it rat­ing of Cari­AA, with a sta­ble out­look on March 14, 2025.

The min­istry said the rat­ing ra­tio­nale was pub­lished on April 25, 2025.

The min­istry re­lease said, “This rat­ing is the sec­ond high­est among Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, af­ter Chile, re­flect­ing the coun­try’s strong cred­it fun­da­men­tals. Eco­nom­ic growth is main­ly dri­ven by the Non-En­er­gy Sec­tor, sup­port­ed by struc­tur­al re­forms and tar­get­ed de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives.”

The re­lease added, “Ac­cord­ing to Cari­CRIS, “T&T has es­tab­lished a Spe­cial Eco­nom­ic Zone (SEZ) regime to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth, at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment, di­ver­si­fy ex­ports and cre­ate new em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. The coun­try launched a Na­tion­al E-Com­merce Strat­e­gy 2025-2030 in March 2025 to im­prove the coun­try’s ease of do­ing busi­ness.”

The rat­ing agency al­so ac­knowl­edged the Gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing com­mit­ment to re­spon­si­ble poli­cies to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and tran­si­tion to­ward re­new­able en­er­gy while it al­so point­ed to strong in­vestor in­ter­est from in­ter­na­tion­al gas com­pa­nies, which em­pha­size the promis­ing fu­ture of T&T’s gas pro­duc­tion, which will fur­ther con­tribute to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic growth.

Cari­CRIS fur­ther said, “For­eign in­ter­est in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor con­tin­ues to be strong and over US$10 bil­lion have been an­nounced as planned for­eign di­rect in­vest­ments (FDIs) for the next three years.”

Cari­CRIS al­so stat­ed the coun­try had shown re­silience to shocks, “The coun­try has a di­ver­si­fied en­er­gy ex­port bas­ket, there­by mit­i­gat­ing, to some ex­tent, the risk of over-de­pen­dence on one en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty.” Cari­CRIS un­der­scores the coun­try’s strong oil and gas pro­duc­tion, de­spite the re­cent re­vo­ca­tion of OFAC li­cens­es by the US Ad­min­is­tra­tion. The agency points to re­cent achieve­ments in gas field de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing the Cas­sia Com­pres­sion Plat­form, Os­prey field, and De No­vo’s Zan­dolie field. Medi­um to long-term gas out­put is sup­port­ed by up­com­ing ma­jor projects, such as the Man­a­tee field and the deep­wa­ter Ca­lyp­so field.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul said in the re­lease, “We are pleased that Cari­CRIS, which has rat­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go for many years and pro­vides an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment of our econ­o­my, has reaf­firmed our in­vest­ment grade cred­it rat­ings.”

He added that the reaf­fir­ma­tion is a recog­ni­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing ef­forts to im­ple­ment re­spon­si­ble, for­ward-look­ing poli­cies for a stronger Trinidad and To­ba­go.