In this space on Jan­u­ary 15, 2026, un­der the head­line, ‘When will T&T’s for­eign re­serves run out?’ I re­port­ed the fol­low­ing;

“The De­cem­ber 2025 Eco­nom­ic Dat­a­Pack in­di­cates that T&T’s net of­fi­cial for­eign re­serves at the end of No­vem­ber last year to­talled US$4.878 bil­lion, which was equal to 5.7 months of im­port cov­er. T&T’s net of­fi­cial for­eign re­serves at the end of No­vem­ber 2023, in­di­cat­ing that in the two-year pe­ri­od, the coun­try’s for­eign re­serves de­clined by US$1.390 bil­lion, or 22.17 per cent. That two-year snap­shot in­di­cates that the av­er­age an­nu­al de­ple­tion rate of T&T’s for­eign re­serves was US$695 mil­lion or by about 11 per cent.”

When I checked the Cen­tral Bank’s Da­ta Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day, it was a pleas­ant sur­prise to dis­cov­er that T&T’s net of­fi­cial re­serves had grown by US$491 mil­lion from US$4.878 bil­lion in No­vem­ber to US$5.369 bil­lion in De­cem­ber. That is an in­crease of 10 per cent. That US$491 mil­lion in­crease in De­cem­ber was net of the nor­mal in­jec­tions, to­talling about US$200 mil­lion a month, that the Gov­ern­ment, through the Cen­tral Bank, makes to au­tho­rised deal­ers, pub­lic sec­tor com­pa­nies and in­sti­tu­tions like the Ex­im­bank of T&T