Every field cross-checked against an OPR notice, ministry release, or audit report. Source URL resolves.
Methodology
How the data is collected, cleaned and published.
OpenBudget TT publishes data that journalists, MPs and citizens rely on. This page documents exactly how every record is produced, what we verify, and where the gaps are. If you find an error, tell us.
Pipeline
From primary source to published record
- 1
Ingest
Records are compiled from primary sources — the Budget Statement and Estimates of Expenditure, published Notices of Contracts Awarded (OPR / NIDCO), and Ministry of Finance HSF reports. PDFs and HTML are parsed into structured records.
- 2
Normalise
Currency, date and value formats are standardised. Ministry and supplier names are resolved against canonical registries.
- 3
Entity match
Suppliers are matched on the name as published; a Companies Registry number is attached only when the source publishes one. Ambiguous names are queued for editorial review.
- 4
Editorial review
The Editorial & Verification Lead reviews flagged records, resolves ambiguous matches, and applies data-quality flags.
- 5
Publish
Verified records are published with their source URL or page reference. Corrections are written into the record itself and the project's source history is public. Bulk exports and the JSON API update on the same cadence.
Budget 2027
How the budget module is built
The Budget 2027 dataset is a typed, versioned transcription of the Budget Statement rather than a database table.
Transcribed, not estimated
Every figure carries the Statement page it came from. Where the Minister did not quantify a measure, the value is recorded as unknown rather than guessed.
Sector totals only
The Statement gives nine sector allocations and the Tobago figures. Head-by-Head allocations are taken from Parliament’s per-Head Budget Guides 2027 and loaded into the Ministries registry separately.
Open by default
The whole dataset is served as JSON at /api/budget under CC BY 4.0.
Schema
Contract record fields
The full schema for ministries, suppliers, HSF and findings is available on the Open Data Portal.
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| id | uuid | Stable internal identifier. Where possible, derived deterministically from the source notice. |
| title | text | Verbatim contract title or subject line as published. |
| ministry_id | uuid → ministries.id | Resolved to a canonical ministry record. Renamed/merged ministries map to their successor entity. |
| supplier_id | uuid → suppliers.id | Resolved to a canonical supplier by the name as published in the notice. |
| value_ttd | numeric | Awarded contract value in TTD exactly as published. Awards priced in other currencies are excluded rather than converted. |
| award_date | date | Date of award as published in the OPR notice or ministry release. |
| scope | text | One of Construction, Consultancy, Goods, Services, ICT, or Other. Inferred from notice subject when not explicit. |
| status | text | Active, Completed, Terminated, or Under Review. Updated when ministries publish completion or termination notices. |
| source_url | url | Public URL of the originating notice or release. |
| source_type | text | OPR Notice, Ministry Release, Auditor General, or Manual Upload. |
Quality
Data-quality flags
Every record carries one or more flags. We never silently interpolate or guess.
Figure copied verbatim from an official document (e.g. the Budget Statement) with a page reference. No derivation.
Scope category was inferred from the contract title because the source notice did not specify a category.
The award appears in the source notice but is not in the registry: no published price, a percentage-of-sales or day-rate price, or a non-TTD currency. Each exclusion is listed below.
The supplier or ministry has formally disputed one or more fields. The dispute is published alongside the record.
Original public URL has gone offline. We retain a mirrored copy of the document.
Limitations
What we don't cover yet
- Budget 2027 figures are transcribed from the public web PDF of the Budget Statement (36 pages) read in Parliament on 12 October 2026; page references are to that edition. Head-by-Head allocations come from the cover of each Parliament Budget Guide 2027. One Head (Office of the Attorney General) had no FY2027 guide at the time of writing and carries its FY2026 Appropriation figure, labelled as such; the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Public Administration and AI were updated to their FY2027 guides on 26 October 2026. The FY2027 Draft Estimates of Expenditure PDF is image-only and could not be transcribed.
- The contract registry currently covers one primary source: NIDCO's Notice of Contracts Awarded for FY2023-24 and FY2024-25 (published 24 December 2024), transcribed row by row. NIDCO is the procuring entity; awards are attributed to the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure, for which NIDCO executes works. It is not a complete record of public procurement — coverage expands as further notices are verified and added.
- Twenty lines in that notice are excluded because they carry no usable TTD price: eight Estate 101 on-board concessions priced at 10% of gross sales; supplementals with no published price (Matrix Ship Management Supp. 3 and 4, Jagmohan Enterprises Supp. 1, ACQ & Associates, Kall Co Supp. 5, China Railway Construction (Caribbean) Supp. 1, an OSHA contract addendum); and awards priced in foreign currency (Matrix Ship Management Supp. 2 at US$2,841,000; EGT Transport at US$92,812.50; Geominex Resources at €82,080 and US$49,760 (two purchase orders); an A.R. Singh barge charter at US$4,000 per day). We do not fabricate an exchange rate.
- Companies Registry numbers and addresses are not published in the source notice, so supplier records carry none. Suppliers are matched on the name as published. Sub-contracts are not included; only the prime award is shown.
- Procurement awarded under urgent or emergency procedures may be disclosed late or not at all.
- HSF balances are the audited year-end figures (FY2007–FY2025) and the quarterly valuations published in Appendix II of the Fund's quarterly investment reports (Sep 2016 onward). Dates are period-ends, which is the finest resolution the published series gives. The FY2013 contribution is shown at the audited annual-report figure (US$42,519,782); the 2025 quarterly report's Appendix II prints US$42,414,251. The headline balance (US$6.58B at 31 August 2026) is as quoted by the Minister of Finance and is marked unaudited until the FY2026 financial statements are published.
- Auditor General findings are not yet ingested. The schema and dashboards are in place; sourced findings will be added as they are verified against tabled reports. No findings are inferred or fabricated.
- Contract status reflects the award as published; completion is not independently tracked.
- Corrections log — 27 October 2026: the PSIP note on the Budget 2027 page wrongly said the Procurement Act amendment also exempted certain entities and cited p.10; the Statement (p.11) says only that approved procurement limits were increased. The exclusion note above previously counted 17 excluded notice lines and six Estate 101 concessions; the notice has 54 lines, 34 are in the registry, and the 20 excluded comprise eight Estate 101 concessions, seven unpriced supplementals and five foreign-currency lines. Mento Phase II no longer shows an operator, since the Statement names EOG only for the first Mento phase. A note was added explaining that the web PDF numbers only 33 measures. Two Heads with published FY2027 guides that had been left out, Service Commissions Department (Head 06, TT$112,438,400) and Elections and Boundaries Commission (Head 08, TT$107,684,300, taken from the guide's total-allocation table because its cover leaves the figure blank), were added to the Ministries registry. The state-enterprise placeholder "Petrotrin Successor Entities" was replaced by Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Ltd. with Heritage Petroleum, Paria Fuel Trading and Guaracara Refining listed as its subsidiaries.
- Corrections log — 26 October 2026: the Ministry of Justice (Head 58) and the Ministry of Public Administration and Artificial Intelligence (Head 31) were moved from their FY2026 Appropriation figures to the FY2027 totals on the cover of their Budget Guides, published after the 18 October audit (TT$262,483,700 and TT$1,447,062,500). In the state-enterprise directory, Caribbean New Media Group was replaced by its successor TTT Ltd., the Tourism Development Company by Tourism Trinidad Ltd., and Metal Industries Company renamed MIC Institute of Technology. The oil-price assumption is no longer labelled WTI and Mento Phase II is shown as planned rather than post-FID, since the Statement states neither.
- Corrections log — 18 October 2026: three awards were previously attributed to the wrong contractor because the source notice lists unpriced supplementals directly above them. Paria Main Road Coastal Repair Works (TT$55,938,650.63) is Jaggerssar Agency Co. Ltd, not Matrix Ship Management; Bridge Reconstruction CP42 Sam Boucaud Extension Road (TT$15,295,637.36) is General Earth Movers Ltd, not China Railway Construction (Caribbean); Landslip Repair CP26 Naparima Mayaro Road (TT$8,556,146.16) is Lutchmeesingh's Transport Contractors Ltd, not Jagmohan Enterprises. A fourth record (Matrix Ship Management Supp. 2, US$2,841,000) had been stored as TTD and is now excluded. The HSF FY2024 rows were corrected to the audited figures (comprehensive income US$1,066,041,442; withdrawals US$369,946,835 in two quarters) and the FY2023 deposit to US$182,213,278 on 23 December 2022.
Cadence
How often the registry updates
National budget
Loaded within days of the Budget Statement being read in Parliament each October; Head allocations follow the Draft Estimates.
Contract awards
Added as ministries and agencies publish their Notices of Contracts Awarded under the PPA, and as those notices are verified.
HSF & live indicators
HSF figures track the audited annual reports; the Economy dashboard streams live from World Bank Open Data.
Corrections
Applied within 5 working days of verification and noted in the affected record. The project's full change history is public.
See an error? Report it.
Every correction is logged. We reply to every report.
Licence
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
All data published by OpenBudget TT is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. You may copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the data for any purpose, including commercially, provided you give appropriate credit and indicate if changes were made.
Required attribution
“Source: OpenBudget TT (openbudgettt.com) — CC BY 4.0”