The Min­istry of Fi­nance says a new de­tailed cred­it as­sess­ment by Moody’s In­vestors Ser­vice has point­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s size­able fis­cal buffers, im­proved near-term ex­ter­nal po­si­tion and prospects for a re­cov­ery in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion.

The Min­istry said in a re­lease yes­ter­day that Moody’s pub­lished its Is­suer In-Depth cred­it analy­sis of Trinidad and To­ba­go, ex­pand­ing on the as­sess­ment is­sued in June when the agency re­vised the coun­try’s out­look from neg­a­tive to sta­ble while af­firm­ing its Ba2 rat­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry, Moody’s as­sess­ment iden­ti­fies the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, equiv­a­lent to about 25 per cent of GDP, and Trea­sury cash and cash-equiv­a­lent de­posits equiv­a­lent to a fur­ther sev­en per cent of GDP as key strengths.

The Min­istry said the agency con­sid­ers these as­sets to pro­vide Trinidad and To­ba­go with ca­pac­i­ty to ab­sorb shocks, sup­port bud­get fi­nanc­ing and meet debt-ser­vice oblig­a­tions dur­ing pe­ri­ods of stress.

The Min­istry al­so re­port­ed that Moody’s ex­pects do­mes­tic nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion to re­bound by the end of 2027, dri­ven by the Man­a­tee, Gin­ger and Aphrodite fields.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry’s ac­count of the re­port, pro­duc­tion could in­crease from about 2.5 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day to be­tween 3.0 and 3.5 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day by 2028-29, sup­port­ing growth, ex­ports and for­eign-ex­change gen­er­a­tion.

The Min­istry said Moody’s al­so as­sessed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work favourably, cit­ing the coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of checks and bal­ances, clean po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tions and strong voice and ac­count­abil­i­ty gov­er­nance in­di­ca­tors.

On for­eign-ex­change re­serves, the Min­istry said Moody’s projects re­serves of US$3.5 bil­lion to US$4 bil­lion, which would pro­vide full ex­ter­nal debt-ser­vice cov­er­age and about four months of im­port cov­er un­der the agency’s nar­row­er mea­sure of liq­uid for­eign-ex­change re­serves.

The Min­istry not­ed that ac­tu­al re­serves stood at US$5.7 bil­lion in Ju­ly 2026, equiv­a­lent to 6.7 months of im­port cov­er. It said Moody’s us­es a nar­row­er mea­sure that ex­cludes gold and Spe­cial Draw­ing Rights.

The Min­istry fur­ther re­port­ed that Moody’s con­sid­ers Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­ter­nal amor­ti­sa­tion pro­file favourable through 2034 and that debt af­ford­abil­i­ty re­mains in line with rat­ing peers.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry, in­ter­est pay­ments ac­count­ed for 12.7 per cent of gov­ern­ment rev­enue in 2025, com­pared with a re­gion­al me­di­an of 13.1 per cent.

The Min­istry said Moody’s al­so recog­nised the Gov­ern­ment’s re­form agen­da, in­clud­ing im­proved da­ta trans­paren­cy, ef­forts to strength­en non-oil rev­enue and mea­sures to re­duce trans­fers and sub­si­dies.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said the as­sess­ment was a val­i­da­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, point­ing to the coun­try’s fis­cal buffers, ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­kets and prospects for the en­er­gy sec­tor.