Chamber flags fiscal risks, forex gaps in Budget 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.

The cham­ber yes­ter­day not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­ject­ed fis­cal deficit of 2.1 per cent of GDP is based on as­sump­tions of US$77 per bar­rel for oil and US$5 per MMB­tu for nat­ur­al gas, leav­ing pub­lic fi­nances ex­posed should prices fall be­low ex­pec­ta­tions.

It is, there­fore, call­ing for sen­si­tiv­i­ty analy­ses and clear­ly de­fined con­tin­gency mea­sures to man­age any po­ten­tial rev­enue short­falls. The cham­ber, how­ev­er, wel­comed sev­er­al mea­sures aimed at sup­port­ing busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion but stressed that im­ple­men­ta­tion will be crit­i­cal to de­ter­min­ing their suc­cess.