Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo will present the 2027 Bud­get on Oc­to­ber 12.

The date was an­nounced yes­ter­day in a brief state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and was al­so post­ed on Tan­coo's so­cial me­dia ac­counts.

Tan­coo, an econ­o­mist by pro­fes­sion, will de­liv­er the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion's sec­ond Bud­get at 1.30 pm in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

His first bud­get, pre­sent­ed on Oc­to­ber 13, 2025, out­lined a $59.232 bil­lion pack­age for fis­cal 2026. Pro­ject­ed rev­enue was es­ti­mat­ed at $55.367 bil­lion, re­sult­ing in a pro­ject­ed deficit of $3.865 bil­lion.

The 2026 Bud­get was based on an oil price of US$73.25 per bar­rel and a gas price of US$4.35 per MMB­tu. Yes­ter­day, oil prices were trad­ing be­tween US$92 and US$102 per bar­rel, while nat­ur­al gas stood at US$2.948 per MMB­tu.

Dur­ing the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view in June, Tan­coo re­port­ed a nar­row­ing fis­cal deficit and im­proved rev­enue per­for­mance.

The 2026 Bud­get com­bined im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' (UNC) cam­paign promis­es with ef­forts to align fis­cal pol­i­cy with eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties and the coun­try's avail­able re­sources.

Fol­low­ing Tan­coo's pre­sen­ta­tion, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son is sched­uled to de­liv­er the Bud­get re­sponse on Oc­to­ber 16, af­ter which de­bate will con­tin­ue in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The Par­lia­ment's Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, com­pris­ing Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion mem­bers, will then ex­am­ine line items in the 2027 Bud­get doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing the Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture, Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue, the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme and re­lat­ed re­ports. Op­po­si­tion MPs will ques­tion Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters on al­lo­ca­tions be­fore the Bud­get moves to the Sen­ate for de­bate.

The Bud­get pack­age must be ap­proved by the end of Oc­to­ber for im­ple­men­ta­tion at the start of fis­cal 2027.

Bharath, Man­ning, Ra­goonath weigh in

Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer Fi­nance Min­istry of­fi­cial Bri­an Man­ning yes­ter­day said the Bud­get an­nounce­ment came less than two weeks af­ter the Cen­tral Bank's Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy An­nounce­ment con­firmed con­cerns he had been rais­ing pub­licly.

"This econ­o­my has stalled," Man­ning said.

"The Cen­tral Bank's fig­ures, re­leased on Sep­tem­ber 30, showed un­em­ploy­ment rose to 5.4 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2026 from 4.9 per cent a year ear­li­er. That is de­te­ri­o­ra­tion, not im­prove­ment, un­der this Gov­ern­ment's watch."

He added that busi­ness lend­ing growth had fall­en from 3.7 per cent to 0.6 per cent be­tween March and Ju­ly, which he said in­di­cat­ed de­clin­ing busi­ness con­fi­dence.

"The en­er­gy sec­tor con­tract­ed. Con­struc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion slowed. Head­line in­fla­tion sits at just 0.6 per cent, not be­cause the cost of liv­ing is un­der con­trol by de­sign, but be­cause de­mand in this econ­o­my is too weak to sus­tain price growth," Man­ning said.

He ar­gued that the Cen­tral Bank's da­ta point­ed to ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, weak­en­ing busi­ness cred­it and a con­tract­ing en­er­gy sec­tor, while the non-en­er­gy sec­tor grew by on­ly 0.2 per cent in the fi­nal quar­ter of 2025.

"These are not in­di­ca­tors of an econ­o­my gath­er­ing mo­men­tum. They are in­di­ca­tors of a stag­nant econ­o­my," he said.

Man­ning said cit­i­zens de­served a Bud­get that di­rect­ly ad­dress­es un­em­ploy­ment and de­clin­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

For­mer UNC Fi­nance min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said the Oc­to­ber 12 pre­sen­ta­tion would be a crit­i­cal test for Gov­ern­ment.

He not­ed that dur­ing de­bate on the 2026 Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill, Tan­coo said de­ci­sive steps had been tak­en to re­store con­fi­dence, re­vive eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, strength­en gov­er­nance and cre­ate path­ways to sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment.

"Those claims now re­quire hard ev­i­dence," Bharath said.

"This is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant af­ter the pre­pos­ter­ous promis­es made on the cam­paign trail, which raised ex­pec­ta­tions of rapid im­prove­ments in cit­i­zens' lives. The Bud­get must demon­strate that those promis­es were more than cam­paign rhetoric."

Bharath said the Bud­get should in­clude mea­sur­able tar­gets for re­duc­ing mur­ders and oth­er crimes, con­crete mea­sures to ease the cost of liv­ing, and sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment strate­gies fo­cused on pri­vate-sec­tor job cre­ation, man­u­fac­tur­ing, dig­i­tal ser­vices, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es, and ex­ports.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said Oc­to­ber 12 was like­ly the lat­est Gov­ern­ment could have sched­uled it to en­sure im­ple­men­ta­tion by the start of the new fis­cal year. He said there would be keen in­ter­est in whether it ad­dress­es out­stand­ing back­pay is­sues and out­lines any plans to restart the Guaracara re­fin­ery.