Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has paid more than $293 mil­lion in fu­el sub­si­dies for au­to­mo­tive diesel so far this year, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries in a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­sponse.

Among the da­ta re­quest­ed were the to­tal fu­el sub­sidy paid for su­per gaso­line, pre­mi­um gaso­line and au­to­mo­tive diesel from Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, month­ly sub­sidy pay­ments for each fu­el, and the sub­sidy paid per litre.

Guardian Me­dia made the re­quest as part of an ef­fort to ex­am­ine how move­ments in in­ter­na­tion­al fu­el prices, in­clud­ing the re­cent volatil­i­ty in glob­al en­er­gy mar­kets, could af­fect T&T’s fu­el sub­sidy bill.

The min­istry re­spond­ed, “The to­tal fu­el sub­sidy paid by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1, 2026 to the date of this re­quest (Ju­ly) is $293,264,034.98 for au­to­mo­tive diesel.”

Guardian Me­dia sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the min­istry on whether the fig­ure rep­re­sents the sub­sidy paid for au­to­mo­tive diesel on­ly, as the re­sponse ap­pears to in­di­cate, or whether it rep­re­sents the com­bined sub­sidy for su­per gaso­line, pre­mi­um gaso­line and au­to­mo­tive diesel, which were all in­clud­ed in the orig­i­nal re­quest.

Those fig­ures were not pro­vid­ed in the re­sponse.

The dis­clo­sure comes af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced a $1 re­duc­tion in the price of su­per gaso­line in the 2026 Bud­get, de­liv­ered on Oc­to­ber 13, 2025, say­ing the move would pro­vide re­lief to mo­torists.

The im­pact of the sub­sidy pro­gramme has been a long­stand­ing fis­cal con­cern.

In the 2023 Bud­get, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert warned that ris­ing glob­al oil prices had cre­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure on Gov­ern­ment’s fu­el sub­sidy bill.

Im­bert said oil prices, which reached as high as US$120 per bar­rel in 2022, could have re­quired up to $3 bil­lion in sub­si­dies if fu­el prices had re­mained un­changed.

At the time, the Gov­ern­ment in­creased the price of pre­mi­um and su­per gaso­line by $1 per litre and diesel by 50 cents per litre, say­ing the move was in­tend­ed to re­duce the an­nu­al sub­sidy cost to about $900 mil­lion.

Im­bert al­so warned that, at an oil price of US$90 per bar­rel, main­tain­ing ex­ist­ing fu­el prices could have cost tax­pay­ers about $1.9 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy was al­so asked to ex­plain how the cur­rent sub­sidy mech­a­nism worked. It ex­plained that state-owned Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP) and pri­vate­ly owned Unipet pur­chase pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts from Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny at ex-ter­mi­nal prices, which fluc­tu­ate with in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket trends.

The min­istry cal­cu­lates the ex-ter­mi­nal price month­ly. Af­ter adding the Gov­ern­ment-fixed whole­sale mar­gin, a ref­er­ence price is es­tab­lished.

Fu­el is then sold to re­tail­ers at whole­sale prices fixed by the Gov­ern­ment. When­ev­er the ref­er­ence price ex­ceeds the fixed whole­sale price, the Gov­ern­ment pays the dif­fer­ence as a sub­sidy.

Guardian Me­dia al­so re­quest­ed doc­u­ments ex­am­in­ing the lev­el of the sub­sidy, pro­ject­ed ex­pen­di­ture, the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the pro­gramme, rec­om­men­da­tions to in­crease or re­duce sub­si­dies and the fis­cal im­pact of main­tain­ing the pro­gramme.

The min­istry de­clined to re­lease those doc­u­ments, cit­ing Sec­tion 27 (1) of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, which ex­empts cer­tain in­ter­nal work­ing doc­u­ments.

The same ex­emp­tion was used to with­hold doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the fund­ing of fu­el sub­si­dies and cor­re­spon­dence be­tween the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and the Min­istry of Fi­nance con­cern­ing sub­sidy costs, ad­di­tion­al fund­ing re­quests, af­ford­abil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­cerns.