Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Bal­dath Ma­haraj has wel­comed key mea­sures out­lined in the Gov­ern­ment’s 2026 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, say­ing the set­tle­ment of out­stand­ing pub­lic sec­tor wage oblig­a­tions will pro­vide much-need­ed re­lief to thou­sands of fam­i­lies while stim­u­lat­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the re­view’s pre­sen­ta­tion by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, Ma­haraj not­ed that the sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing al­lo­ca­tion of $2.93 bil­lion in­cludes $2.83 bil­lion ear­marked for the pay­ment of out­stand­ing wages and salaries owed to more than 62,000 pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

De­scrib­ing the pay­out as a nec­es­sary step, Ma­haraj said the funds rep­re­sent a long-stand­ing debt to pub­lic ser­vants.

“Set­tling these pay­ments places well-earned cash di­rect­ly in­to the hands of thou­sands of fam­i­lies,” Ma­haraj said. “This in­jec­tion of liq­uid­i­ty will pro­vide im­me­di­ate fi­nan­cial re­lief and en­cour­age con­sumer spend­ing, giv­ing a help­ful short-term boost to the re­tail and ser­vices sec­tors.”

While wel­com­ing the ben­e­fits of the wage set­tle­ment, Ma­haraj stressed the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing a fo­cus on long-term eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and de­vel­op­ment.

He point­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­cent out­look up­grade, its re­moval from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s list of non-co­op­er­a­tive ju­ris­dic­tions, and its suc­cess­ful in­ter­na­tion­al bond is­suance as in­di­ca­tors of grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s fis­cal man­age­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, sus­tain­ing that con­fi­dence will re­quire a bal­ance be­tween meet­ing cur­rent oblig­a­tions and in­vest­ing in projects that strength­en the na­tion’s fu­ture.

“Ful­fill­ing com­mit­ments to work­ers helps fam­i­lies in the short term, but on­go­ing in­vest­ments in in­fra­struc­ture, drainage sys­tems and tech­nol­o­gy are what will tru­ly se­cure Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture,” he said.

The Cham­ber al­so wel­comed the coun­try’s rev­enue per­for­mance dur­ing the first half of the fis­cal year, not­ing that to­tal rev­enue ex­ceed­ed pro­jec­tions.

Ma­haraj said stronger-than-ex­pect­ed rev­enue col­lec­tions, sup­port­ed by sta­ble en­er­gy prices, helped re­duce the fis­cal deficit to near bal­ance, rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year.

He al­so en­dorsed sev­er­al rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing re­forms in­tro­duced in the 2026 Bud­get, in­clud­ing the Com­mer­cial Bank As­set Levy and the Trans­fer Pric­ing Regime, which he said are ex­pect­ed to strength­en tax com­pli­ance and con­tribute to the sta­bil­i­sa­tion of the for­eign ex­change mar­ket.

Look­ing ahead, Ma­haraj called on the Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue ef­forts to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my be­yond the oil and gas sec­tor while ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal ser­vices.

He wel­comed re­cent tech­no­log­i­cal im­prove­ments, in­clud­ing the ex­pan­sion of Linx and on­line pay­ment sys­tems at cus­toms of­fices, as well as the mod­erni­sa­tion of the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that sev­er­al chal­lenges af­fect­ing busi­ness­es re­main un­re­solved.

Among the is­sues high­light­ed were the need to im­prove ac­cess to for­eign ex­change through the Ex­im Bank and ac­cel­er­ate the pro­cess­ing of out­stand­ing VAT re­funds.

Ma­haraj said ad­dress­ing these con­cerns would help lo­cal en­ter­pris­es ex­pand and be­come more com­pet­i­tive.

“The Cham­ber stands ready to work con­struc­tive­ly along­side the Gov­ern­ment to build a com­pet­i­tive, di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my that ben­e­fits every cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.