Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Gov­ern­ment will pur­sue Phase II of the re­fur­bish­ment of T&T’s Chancery and Res­i­dence in Cara­cas in 2026 and will al­so re­view the im­pact of the na­tion­al min­i­mum wage on the econ­o­my.

These ini­tia­tives are among the projects out­lined in Gov­ern­ment’s Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) 2026, one of sev­er­al doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo on Mon­day when he de­liv­ered the 2026 Na­tion­al Bud­get.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, dur­ing fis­cal 2026, em­pha­sis will be placed on “build­ing pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions and in­fra­struc­ture, em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens through ed­u­ca­tion and job op­por­tu­ni­ties, fos­ter­ing safe­ty and jus­tice, while strength­en­ing the econ­o­my through di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, ease of do­ing busi­ness and wider use of ad­vanced tech­nol­o­gy.”

An over­all PSIP al­lo­ca­tion of $4.1 bil­lion has been pro­posed for 2026 to fund these pri­or­i­ty pro­grammes and projects through Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies, and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). This rep­re­sents a re­duc­tion from the $5.66 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in the 2025 PSIP.

The projects will be fi­nanced through gen­er­al rev­enues, ex­ter­nal bor­row­ing, and grants from re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment banks and part­ners such as the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF), and the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB).

The PSIP stat­ed that up­grade works will tar­get 52 gov­ern­ment-owned prop­er­ties lo­cat­ed in coun­tries where T&T main­tains em­bassies and con­sulates gen­er­al — “sig­nalling a more dig­ni­fied and pro­fes­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion abroad, re­in­forc­ing T&T’s diplo­mat­ic im­age and pres­ence on the glob­al stage.”

An al­lo­ca­tion of $2.4 mil­lion has been pro­vid­ed to ad­vance Phase II of the re­fur­bish­ment of T&T’s Chancery and Res­i­dence in Cara­cas.

Phase I fo­cused on struc­tur­al and in­fra­struc­tur­al up­grades, while Phase II will “en­com­pass the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of all de­sign el­e­ments to en­sure the res­i­dence meets mod­ern stan­dards of func­tion­al­i­ty and safe­ty,” the re­port not­ed.

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs will al­so move ahead with plans to es­tab­lish a new em­bassy in the Mid­dle East, mark­ing what the re­port de­scribed as “a sig­nif­i­cant step in T&T’s ef­forts to deep­en eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal ties with­in the re­gion.”

“This ini­tia­tive will strength­en diplo­mat­ic ties with key Mid­dle East­ern na­tions en­gaged in the glob­al en­er­gy land­scape and fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion, in­vest­ment, and knowl­edge ex­change across crit­i­cal sec­tors,” the PSIP added.

The project is said to align with na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties to mod­ernise the en­er­gy sec­tor — in­clud­ing re­new­able en­er­gy — while ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in tourism and fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, $8 mil­lion will be utilised to up­grade T&T’s Em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton DC, the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of the Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions in New York, and the High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don.

Labour and Em­ploy­ment

On labour mat­ters, the re­port stat­ed that Gov­ern­ment has “pri­ori­tised the holis­tic em­pow­er­ment and de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s work­ing class” and will con­tin­ue to ad­vance the prin­ci­ples of de­cent work and strong labour re­la­tions.

In fis­cal 2026, a key fo­cus will be the re­view and im­pact as­sess­ment of the na­tion­al min­i­mum wage. The Min­istry of Labour will es­tab­lish a sys­tem to re­view, de­ter­mine, and mon­i­tor the min­i­mum wage, with the ex­er­cise ex­pect­ed to con­clude fol­low­ing sub­mis­sion of the fi­nal re­port and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of train­ing.

Oth­er labour-re­lat­ed ini­tia­tives in­clude a re­view of em­ploy­ment leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing stan­dards, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, and re­trench­ment and sev­er­ance ben­e­fits. The Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil (NTAC) will al­so be op­er­a­tionalised dur­ing the year.

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) will un­der­take a $26 mil­lion geospa­tial up­dat­ing ex­er­cise and pi­lot test in prepa­ra­tion for the up­com­ing Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus.

The ex­er­cise will es­tab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive na­tion­al geospa­tial data­base by col­lect­ing geo-lo­cat­ed ad­dress­es and re­lat­ed da­ta through­out T&T. Field staff will be re­cruit­ed and trained to con­duct the one-year cen­sus pi­lot.

In the so­cial de­vel­op­ment sec­tor, $28.5 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to im­prove the liv­ing stan­dards of vul­ner­a­ble groups, in­clud­ing so­cial­ly dis­placed per­sons, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, chil­dren, sur­vivors of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, and the el­der­ly.

The Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MPS­DFS) will com­plete the up­grade of the Cou­va Tran­si­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ty for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Women and will al­so be­gin de­vel­op­ing ac­ces­si­ble hous­ing for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, with $3.5 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for ini­tial con­struc­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­istry will con­struct a sport­ing are­na for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties at Carlsen Field, aimed at pro­mot­ing in­clu­sion and pro­vid­ing ded­i­cat­ed sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties for dif­fer­ent­ly abled ath­letes.