2025/2026 budget to be presented on October 13: Will the UNC deliver on its promises?

THE highly-anticipated budget 2025-2026 will be presented on October 13. It will be the maiden budget for the nearly six-month-old UNC government and Minister of Finance Davendranath Tancoo.

After five months of governance amid a whirlwind of global and domestic challenges, this new government will now have to show TT the way forward, starting with managing its finances and resources.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has not shied away from voicing her desires for the upcoming budget, putting her focus on initiatives that provide necessary support for children and low income homes.

However, Tancoo as finance minister has to balance the Prime Minister’s ambitions with macro-fiscal realities.

The Prime Minister herself admitted to the media that the fact that TTs borrowings and expenditures over the past decade seem to be outpacing the country’s ability to garner revenue and as such this budget may carry a deficit. However the Government seems determined to fulfil its manifesto promises through deliverable, time-bound items.

Issues such as national security, economic development, job creation and diversification are among the key priorities that may be focused on in this budget.

The UNC’s promise to ensure “everybody wins” took them to a landslide victory in the April 28 general election and since Persad-Bissessar was sworn in on May 1, the government has hit the ground running – making efforts to fulfil the many promises the party made on the campaign trail.

With reference to its manifesto, now accepted by cabinet as the government’s policy framework, this government set out clear goals surrounding these points:

●Protecting pension benefits/eliminating taxes on retirement benefits.

●Baseline ten per cent public-service salary increase (workers’ agenda/start negotiations at ten per cent).

●Create 50,000+ jobs / large employment push (targeted job creation).

●Open/fully operationalise the Couva Children’s Hospital (and finish major health works).

●Restart the student laptop programme (Form-1 laptops; digitise education).

●Reduce food import bill/boost agriculture

●Crime reduction: new/strengthened crime-fighting ministries and security measures.

●Revive/rehabilitate state energy assets and energy strategy (referenced campaign promise re: Petrotrin revival / energy policy).

●Labour protections, collective bargaining, support to unions, protections for domestic workers.

The Government has already started achieving its policy goals in several areas.

Persad-Bissessar, on May 4, spoke to the media with excitement about opening the Couva Children’s Hospital, citing it as one of the government’s priorities. However she said the timeline would depend on assessments done on the hospital.

In September the Minister of Works and Infrastructure, Jearlean John, during a tour of the hospital said it is expected to open by the end of the year. Newsday understands that upgrades to the hospital could cost $10 million.

Initiatives to move forward with its promise to bring a ten per cent public service wage increase have reached negotiations stages with a few organisations already accepting renegotiated fiscal packages.

Last week, the Central Bank and the Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union (BIGWU) concluded their collective bargaining negotiations for the period January 1, 2021 to December 31 , 2023, agreeing on a six per cent wage hike for workers.

In September the government gave a directive to pay workers in the National Insurance Board to implement salary adjustments and pay outstanding arrears for bargaining agreements made for the 2014-2016 period, including a nine per cent wage increase.

The government also approved the procurement of 18,000 laptops for students who wrote the 2025 Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination in May, to restart the student laptop programme, pursuant to one of Persad-Bissessar’s higher priorities of facilitating children’s education.

However, the government’s early successes have also come with emerging and systematic challenges which are expected to be focused on in this upcoming budget.

Crime and security, one of the leading priorities of most governments, saw significant focus since the start of the year. The UNC-led government implemented a state of emergency on July 18, to deal with emerging threats. The SoE was extended by three months on July 28 and is expected to end in mid-October.

Since the implementation of the SoE the murder rate has dropped by more than 40 per cent with the murder toll at 294 as compared to 490 for the same period the year before. The UNC’s crime plan does not simply surround the SoE but involves providing legislative, technical and physical support to crime-fighting and judicial bodies, according to its policy framework.

Some of the proposed initiatives include pursuing stand your ground legislation, providing more courtrooms, installing more CCTV cameras, upgrading key police units such as the National Operations Centre and several other initiatives.

These priorities could see themselves being focused on as government priorities in this budget.

Despite facilitating wage increases for a few workers, several others have found themselves on the breadline with make-work programmes such as Cepep and the URP, which were shut down amid claims of corruption through “ghost gangs.” More than 14,000 people were allegedly fired, however several investigations have revealed that thousands of the alleged workers were registered to work but never showed up and still were paid.

Still, the restart of these make-work programmes may also be on the list of priorities for the government in this upcoming budget.

Energy has seen several wins since the UNC-led government came into office as well.

In August the Ministry of Energy finalised negotiations with oil and gas giant Exxon for seven ultra-deep water blocks for exploration and production.

As recently as October 8, a few days before the budget is to be read, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) granted TT a limited licence to begin talks with Venezuela on the once-believed-dead Dragon gas deal.

However, with significant declines in oil and gas production over the past decade, several economists have urged the government to focus on diversification from energy and a focus on manufacturing, agriculture and other forms of revenue-earning methods.

The UNC’s manifesto made policy also focuses on this, expressing plans to put allocations for targeted job creation programmes such as agriculture stimulus programmes and small business grants, Housing Development Corporation (HDC) construction projects and creative industry pilot programmes. Smaller, measurable programmes in these may be a feature of this upcoming budget.