Full Document: 2026/2027 Budget Speech
This morning [Feb 20], Premier and Minister of Finance David Burt delivered the 2026 Budget in the House of Assembly, which details Government’s financial plans for the upcoming fiscal year.
A copy of the full Budget statement is below, you can view our live blog on the Budget here, all our coverage of the 2026 Budget here, and the full speech is below.
The full Budget Speech is below [PDF here]:
For those actually paying attention, this budget is deeply flawed and fundamentally unstable
It uses a self-admitted peak year of volatile Corporate Income Tax revenue ($753M, projected to drop to $600M the following year) to justify permanent spending increases of 12.4%, while simultaneously celebrating fiscal discipline. You cannot simultaneously warn that CIT is volatile and use it to justify permanent spending increases, but that’s nothing new for this government.
The $605M debt repayment, though not insignificant, is a one-off action with no further debt reduction planned through 2028/29, and the much-trumpeted fiscal rules are riddled with exclusions large enough to render them effectively meaningless. Again, kicking the can down the road.
Healthcare remains the most dangerous blind spot. The Bermuda Hospitals Board carries a $663.9M government guarantee while receiving another $55M “time-bound” bailout with no structural fix, and Universal Health Coverage is promised by October 2026 despite the budget admitting the foundational work is incomplete. What a shocker!
Housing delivery lacks binding timelines or mechanisms, pension reform for the Contributory Pension Fund is urgently flagged then quietly deferred, and the Sovereign Wealth Fund and Stabilisation Fund have no capitalisation amounts, governance structures, or legislation to provide any real material benefit.Shocker, again.
Stripped of its valedictory tone, this is a budget that spends a windfall as though it were permanent income, defers its hardest decisions to successors, and presents contingent liabilities totalling nearly $1 billion as footnotes.
YIKES.
He learned from his mentor.
Nailed it!
It absolutely does not rely on CIT to fund permanent initiatives. It was clearly stated that CIT will fluctuate and therefore financial planning would NOT be based on CIT.
Let’s not let bias get in our way.