Hilton, CAL, TSTT, NGC, PTSC, VM­COTT, etc. What do they have in com­mon? First­ly, they are all to­tal­ly or par­tial­ly, com­mer­cial state en­ti­ties, in one form or the oth­er. Sec­ond­ly, their vi­a­bil­i­ty al­ways comes to the fore in times of tight fis­cal rev­enues, like now, be­cause of the high cost of fund­ing these en­ter­pris­es by the Trea­sury and there­fore by tax­pay­ers. Third­ly, and whether we rec­og­nize it or not, they all re­late to the is­sue of the role of the state in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) is prepar­ing to roll out sweep­ing changes to the coun­try’s cur­ren­cy, fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion and pay­ments ecosys­tem, as it tran­si­tions in­to a new five-year strate­gic cy­cle aimed at mod­ernising the fi­nan­cial sys­tem and strength­en­ing eco­nom­ic re­silience.

De­spite see­ing long-stand­ing Tu­na­puna busi­ness Pat&Max Ltd move from its East­ern Main Road home to the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, busi­ness stake­hold­ers from the area are hail­ing the move as a suc­cess giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions of the coun­try.

The shop­ping cen­tre at the cor­ner of Fred­er­ick and Park Streets, known as Ex­cel­lent Up­town Mall, was list­ed as a com­mer­cial prop­er­ty for sale on sev­er­al re­al es­tate sites and so­cial me­dia over the East­er week­end.

Dis­rup­tion in the Strait of Hor­muz is be­gin­ning to show up not on­ly in en­er­gy prices but al­so in phys­i­cal com­mod­i­ty flows, and this could car­ry mixed im­pli­ca­tions for T&T.

East­er re­mains one of the most im­por­tant pe­ri­ods for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor, and this year the out­look re­flects strong de­mand across both is­lands.

In no­tices post­ed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change and pub­lished in the me­dia, Am­bi­ca Bisses­sar was named Head, Re­tail Bank­ing Caribbean South & East, while In­gram Bain was an­nounced as Di­rec­tor, Com­pli­ance, Caribbean South & East. Both ap­point­ments took ef­fect on Wednes­day, April 1, 2026.

Bar­ba­di­an na­tion­al Kather­ine Payne has been ap­point­ed Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Dig­i­cel (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd.

T&T’s po­si­tion as a “first mover” in ac­cess­ing Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas could prove crit­i­cal to both its own en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and wider Caribbean in­te­gra­tion, in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant Ver­li­er Quan-Vie has said.

The Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) has ap­proved a US$10 mil­lion line of cred­it aimed at ex­pand­ing ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing for small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The South­ern Caribbean and Guyana’s ship­ping and lo­gis­tics sec­tor was giv­en a sig­nif­i­cant boost last week af­ter PAS Car­go Guyana of­fi­cial­ly opened its new off-port bond­ed fa­cil­i­ty at the Rome Cor­ri­dor, in­tro­duc­ing what is ex­pect­ed to be the first 30-minute car­go clear­ance guar­an­tee in the South Amer­i­can state.

Calls are in­ten­si­fy­ing for the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism to ur­gent­ly re­store the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion, as econ­o­mist and for­mer chair­man Dr Ronald Ramkissoon warns that con­tin­ued de­lays are un­der­min­ing the coun­try’s busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment at a crit­i­cal junc­ture.
Ramkissoon, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day with Guardian Me­dia, cau­tioned that the ab­sence of a func­tion­ing com­mis­sion risks erod­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence and weak­en­ing the frame­work for fair com­pe­ti­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when T&T needs to strength­en its eco­nom­ic re­silience.
“One would have thought the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion would have made it eas­i­er to do busi­ness when the reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment is not be­ing put in place.