Opposition Leader Pennelope Beckles-Robinson has declared that Trinidad and Tobago is experiencing a recession, pointing to declining economic activity and the Government’s own economic projections.<\/p>\n
Speaking during the 2027 Budget debate, Beckles cited figures from the Review of the Economy 2026 showing that real gross domestic product declined by 0.5 per cent in 2025.<\/p>\n
She further highlighted a forecast contraction of 2.2 per cent for 2026.<\/p>\n
Beckles contrasted those figures with earlier International Monetary Fund projections that had anticipated continued economic growth.<\/p>\n
She also referenced declines in construction, trade, manufacturing and energy production as evidence of worsening conditions across several sectors.<\/p>\n
According to the Opposition Leader, the downturn has been compounded by government policies affecting business confidence, employment and consumer spending.<\/p>\n
She criticised Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo for what she described as a failure to adequately explain the country’s economic performance during his budget presentation.<\/p>\n
Although the projected contraction was cited from the Government’s economic review, the recession declaration represents Beckles’ interpretation of the available indicators.<\/p>\n
A forecast decline in annual GDP is not identical to a final determination of a recession.<\/p>\n
Beckles nevertheless maintained that ordinary citizens were already experiencing the effects through reduced spending power, fewer employment opportunities and declining business activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beckles cites declining economic activity while challenging the Government’s national economic outlook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trinidad-and-tobago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}