Econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran has is­sued a warn­ing re­gard­ing T&T’s fis­cal tra­jec­to­ry, cau­tion­ing that the na­tion is rapid­ly gain­ing mo­men­tum on the road to­wards an even­tu­al sov­er­eign debt de­fault or re­struc­tur­ing.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view de­liv­ered by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo yes­ter­day, Dukha­ran ref­er­enced the June 2026 edi­tion of her Month­ly Caribbean Eco­nom­ic Re­port, in which she re­vealed that Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment’s debt out­stand­ing surged by 2.5 per cent year-over-year in the first quar­ter of 2026.

Strik­ing­ly, ex­ter­nal debt drove much of this in­crease, spik­ing by 5.3 per cent.