Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has slammed the Gov­ern­ment’s 2027 Bud­get as a “biki­ni bud­get” lack­ing sub­stance, da­ta and a clear vi­sion for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture.

A vis­i­bly up­set Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says To­ba­go has not re­ceived its fair share of fund­ing for fis­cal 2027.

Fis­cal re­silience and busi­ness cash flow are at the heart of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s as­sess­ment of Bud­get 2027, with the busi­ness group warn­ing that the coun­try’s fis­cal out­look re­mains vul­ner­a­ble to swings in glob­al en­er­gy prices.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Leti­tia Cox says she was left dis­ap­point­ed by the 2027 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

The Gov­ern­ment’s plan to restart the Petrotrin re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre has drawn sup­port from in­dus­try stake­hold­ers, but for­mer En­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan is ques­tion­ing the cost of the pro­posed restart, the avail­abil­i­ty of crude oil and ac­cess to ex­port mar­kets.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has de­scribed the 2027 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion as a “peo­ple-cen­tred and ex­cel­lent bud­get.”

Ed­u­ca­tion and skills train­ing has been al­lo­cat­ed $8.033 bil­lion in the 2027 Bud­get, a $743 mil­lion re­duc­tion from the pre­vi­ous fis­cal year, rais­ing con­cerns among ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers about whether schools will have the re­sources need­ed to main­tain stan­dards and sup­port stu­dents.

Con­sumers could face high­er bills for stream­ing sub­scrip­tions and oth­er on­line ser­vices fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s an­nounce­ment in to­day’s 2026/2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to ap­ply Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) to dig­i­tal and re­mote ser­vices sup­plied by non-res­i­dent com­pa­nies.

Im­prov­ing wa­ter sup­plies, strength­en­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and ex­pand­ing ac­cess to hous­ing are among the pri­or­i­ties in the Gov­ern­ment’s $4 bil­lion cap­i­tal spend­ing pro­gramme for fis­cal 2027.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has an­nounced a $4.087 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for pub­lic util­i­ties in the 2027 Bud­get, up from $3.395 bil­lion last year, out­lin­ing plans to im­prove wa­ter sup­ply, ex­pand elec­tric­i­ty ac­cess and ad­vance three pro­posed de­sali­na­tion plants, while in­tro­duc­ing a sur­charge for high-con­sum­ing res­i­den­tial elec­tric­i­ty cus­tomers.

The hous­ing al­lo­ca­tion for the 2026-2027 bud­get in­creased to $904 mil­lion ($0.904 bil­lion), how­ev­er few de­tails are avail­able on what new pro­grames, in­cen­tives, or ini­tia­tives are un­der­way with­in the sec­tor.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Uni­fied Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan is ques­tion­ing how the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to de­liv­er on its promis­es to re­duce the food im­port bill and ex­pand lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, point­ing to an al­lo­ca­tion of $987 mil­lion for agri­cul­ture in the 2027 Bud­get.