Will Mr Tancoo hide T&T’s energy windfall?

One of the most im­por­tant—and po­ten­tial­ly most re­veal­ing—as­pects of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s Mon­day Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is what he says about the en­er­gy wind­fall that land­ed in the Gov­ern­ment’s lap in the third quar­ter of cal­en­dar 2026.

For the four or five read­ers of this col­umn who are pay­ing at­ten­tion, this is not a mi­nor ac­count­ing de­tail. It goes to the heart of the Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal po­si­tion and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the as­sump­tions un­der­pin­ning the 2027 Bud­get.

Be­tween Ju­ly 1 and Sep­tem­ber 30, Trinidad and To­ba­go ben­e­fit­ted from a re­mark­able com­bi­na­tion of high­er oil prices, sharply high­er in­ter­na­tion­al LNG prices and in­creased At­lantic LNG pro­duc­tion. My cal­cu­la­tion is that the Gov­ern­ment’s ad­di­tion­al en­er­gy rev­enue dur­ing the quar­ter amount­ed to be­tween $1.13 bil­lion and $1.33 bil­lion, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$166 mil­lion to US$196 mil­lion.