Con­sumers could face high­er bills for stream­ing sub­scrip­tions and oth­er on­line ser­vices fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s an­nounce­ment in to­day’s 2026/2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to ap­ply Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) to dig­i­tal and re­mote ser­vices sup­plied by non-res­i­dent com­pa­nies.

Im­prov­ing wa­ter sup­plies, strength­en­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and ex­pand­ing ac­cess to hous­ing are among the pri­or­i­ties in the Gov­ern­ment’s $4 bil­lion cap­i­tal spend­ing pro­gramme for fis­cal 2027.

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.

The hous­ing al­lo­ca­tion for the 2026-2027 bud­get in­creased to $904 mil­lion ($0.904 bil­lion), how­ev­er few de­tails are avail­able on what new pro­grames, in­cen­tives, or ini­tia­tives are un­der­way with­in the sec­tor.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Uni­fied Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan is ques­tion­ing how the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to de­liv­er on its promis­es to re­duce the food im­port bill and ex­pand lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, point­ing to an al­lo­ca­tion of $987 mil­lion for agri­cul­ture in the 2027 Bud­get.

Gov­ern­ment will al­lo­cate an ad­di­tion­al $15 mil­lion for road re­pairs across Trinidad and To­ba­go as part of its con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in the Na­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Restora­tion of Roads Pro­gramme.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) is mourn­ing the death of a Coast Guard sailor who was in Colom­bia as part of a crew sup­port­ing the re­fit and up­grade of a ves­sel.

A rou­tine vis­it to his fa­ther’s Princes Town home on Sun­day turned in­to a hor­ri­fy­ing dis­cov­ery for Do­minic Han­son, who found his 70-year-old fa­ther dead, with his hands and feet bound.

The Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­firmed that the 13-year-old girl who was re­cent­ly re­cov­ered af­ter be­ing re­port­ed miss­ing for 26 days is in its care.

A po­lice of­fi­cer has sued the State, al­leg­ing that he was ma­li­cious­ly pros­e­cut­ed for dri­ving a po­lice ve­hi­cle dan­ger­ous­ly lead­ing to a car ac­ci­dent in 2018.

Mo­torists trav­el­ling to and from the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go are be­ing ad­vised to ex­pect tem­po­rary traf­fic changes to­mor­row for the of­fi­cial open­ing of the air­port’s new East­ern Ter­mi­nal.

The fol­low­ing are 20 pro­posed mea­sures in the 2027 Bud­get pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.