Water projects, electricity surcharge lead $4.087B Public Utilities plan

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.

About one in ten house­holds in Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to pay a high­er elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge of five cents per kilo­watt-hour above 3,000 kilo­watts from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027, Tan­coo said.

The mea­sure is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate $17.8 mil­lion in ad­di­tion­al rev­enue, which would help fi­nance the ex­ist­ing elec­tric­i­ty sub­sidy for house­holds with very low con­sump­tion.