T&T’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor con­tributed an es­ti­mat­ed US$10.6 bil­lion in 2025, ex­clud­ing pe­tro­le­um and chem­i­cal prod­ucts — a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease that un­der­scores its role as a key pil­lar in the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy.

In ear­ly Oc­to­ber, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh urged the new­ly ap­point­ed Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) board to ex­plore the use of agri­cul­tur­al­ly zoned CDA lands as a med­ical cannabis hub.

US en­er­gy econ­o­mist Dr Fran­cis­co Monal­di be­lieves that the break­down of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Venezuela is on­ly a “pause” and in­evitably busi­ness will tri­umph over pol­i­tics with en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions re­sum­ing.

Glob­al en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices are his­tor­i­cal­ly volatile, dri­ven by every­thing from geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts, fluc­tu­at­ing weath­er pat­terns to glob­al sup­ply-de­mand im­bal­ances. For T&T, close­ly mon­i­tor­ing these prices is of strate­gic im­por­tance. En­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­flu­ence the coun­try’s bud­get­ed rev­enue, so­cial ex­pen­di­ture, de­posits to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund as well as in­vest­ments in in­fra­struc­ture. In the lat­est bud­get, the Gov­ern­ment pegged bud­get rev­enue to an oil price of $73.25 per bar­rel and a gas price of US $4.25 per mil­lion British ther­mal unit.

In this space, in the Busi­ness Guardian pub­li­ca­tion of Oc­to­ber 16, this jour­nal­ist wrote a com­men­tary head­lined ‘Is Govt plan­ning to bor­row $19B in 2026?’ That com­men­tary orig­i­nat­ed be­cause when I went look­ing for the Draft Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue 2026 on the night of Oc­to­ber 13, which was the same day that Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo de­liv­ered the fis­cal pack­age for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, it was not avail­able on the web­site of the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

The ex­e­cu­tion of do­mes­tic nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tracts since the end of sig­nif­i­cant long-term agree­ments has been a ma­jor na­tion­al event. Re­call the fan­fare of the an­nounce­ments in 2017 and 2018 of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) en­ter­ing new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tracts with EOG and Shell and bpTT re­spec­tive­ly. Those up­stream agree­ments en­abled NGC to en­ter re­newed gas sup­ply con­tracts with all its ma­jor down­stream petro­chem­i­cal cus­tomers.

Just over a week af­ter To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val, there are wor­ry­ing signs that the event has done lit­tle to move the nee­dle in the To­ba­go busi­ness sec­tor.

With Guyana ex­pect­ing to be­gin pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty from nat­ur­al gas as soon as next year, the coun­try’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is po­si­tion­ing it­self to be­come the Caribbean’s next ma­jor man­u­fac­tur­ing hub.

The Guardian Group Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion has pledged US$312,000 to sup­port re­cov­ery and re­build­ing ef­forts in Ja­maica, fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

While the na­tion’s petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor has long been syn­ony­mous with the pro­duc­tion of am­mo­nia, methanol, and Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG), Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) main­tains a cru­cial role in ex­port­ing sev­er­al oth­er key com­modi­ties that gen­er­ate vi­tal for­eign ex­change.

The mi­grant labour sit­u­a­tion cur­rent­ly un­fold­ing in T&T bears strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to the cri­sis in the Unit­ed States.

The To­ba­go arm of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is call­ing Movi­eTowne’s pend­ing clo­sure an­oth­er stark re­minder of the is­land’s strug­gling econ­o­my.