Two years af­ter a suc­cess­ful list­ing on the Ja­maican Stock Ex­change, Trinida­di­an im­porter and dis­trib­u­tor AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH) was of­fi­cial­ly list on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change TTSE).

Multi­na­tion­al pay­ment card ser­vices com­pa­ny, Visa, yes­ter­day said that T&T is still a pri­or­i­ty mar­ket in the Caribbean for its op­er­a­tions, de­spite the con­sis­tent re­duc­tion in for­eign ex­change spend­ing lim­its on cred­it cards by banks in this coun­try.

Lo­cal ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) has gen­er­at­ed close to US$4 mil­lion in for­eign ex­change earn­ings dur­ing the month of Ju­ly, a his­toric achieve­ment that un­der­scores TCL’s grow­ing re­gion­al foot­print and its piv­otal role in T&T’s man­u­fac­tur­ing land­scape.

Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Roger Ho­sein is con­vinced that the new book which he coau­thored of­fers so­lu­tions for some of the press­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges that T&T faces at the mo­ment.

Some in­sur­ance com­pa­nies in T&T of­fer their clients “in­ter­est-free loans” against life in­sur­ance poli­cies that ac­cu­mu­late cash val­ue. The pol­i­cy­hold­er is af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bor­row against the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed val­ue of the pol­i­cy at ze­ro in­ter­est. By of­fer­ing such loans, the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny pre­sum­ably can at­tract a high­er de­mand for its in­sur­ance prod­ucts. Sounds like a win-win for both the pol­i­cy­hold­er and the com­pa­ny. The re­al­i­ty is very dif­fer­ent. In­ter­est-free pol­i­cy loans are not free! There are hid­den costs that have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the fi­nan­cial well­be­ing of the pol­i­cy­hold­er. It is im­por­tant for pol­i­cy­hold­ers to re­mem­ber that “THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH”!! This max­im sim­ply means that there is a cost to every­thing!!

The dig­i­tal econ­o­my has re­shaped the way busi­ness­es com­mu­ni­cate with con­sumers. From so­cial me­dia cam­paigns to tar­get­ed ad­ver­tis­ing, the col­lec­tion and use of con­sumer da­ta has be­come the back­bone of mod­ern mar­ket­ing. Yet, this re­liance on da­ta is be­ing chal­lenged glob­al­ly as pri­va­cy con­cerns in­ten­si­fy and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works tight­en. For T&T, where busi­ness­es are in­creas­ing­ly lean­ing on dig­i­tal strate­gies to reach au­di­ences at home and abroad, the con­ver­sa­tion about da­ta pri­va­cy is no longer op­tion­al. It is a defin­ing fac­tor that will shape the fu­ture of mar­ket­ing, trust and com­pet­i­tive­ness in the lo­cal econ­o­my.

Last week, two mem­bers of the Cab­i­net of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar—Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Kennedy Swarats­ingh and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie—ac­tive­ly at­tempt­ed to force the First Cit­i­zens group CEO, Karen Dar­basie, to re­sign.

As T&T deep­ens its en­gage­ment in cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bon de­vel­op­ment, re­cent geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela cast a long shad­ow over projects cen­tral to T&T’s en­er­gy fu­ture.

The Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day pre­sent­ed the let­ters of ap­point­ment to the new di­rec­tors of First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd, the 100-per cent State-owned com­pa­ny that holds the State’s 60.1 per cent stake in First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings, the pub­licly list­ed com­pa­ny.

A proud mile­stone for the ANSA McAL Group as the com­pa­ny has be­come the first of its size in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean to in­te­grate AI in­to its hu­man re­sources op­er­a­tions.

As the world cel­e­brates the un­prece­dent­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains of fron­tier tech­nolo­gies such as ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ro­bot­ics, the ques­tion for T&T is stark: are we tru­ly po­si­tioned to har­ness the wealth and op­por­tu­ni­ties these trans­for­ma­tive tech­nolo­gies cre­ate? The un­com­fort­able an­swer is, “not re­al­ly.”

The un­of­fi­cial, of­fi­cial brand of Trinidad and To­ba­go is prepar­ing to go on sale on Ama­zon.