Guyanese Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali warned that the world is fac­ing a widen­ing and dan­ger­ous en­er­gy gap, dri­ven by surg­ing de­mand, un­even in­vest­ment, and grow­ing min­er­al con­straints, as he ad­dressed the Off­shore Tech­nol­o­gy Con­fer­ence (OTC) 2026 yes­ter­day.

For­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert has at­trib­uted Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd’s (RBL) re­cent de­ci­sion to in­crease bank­ing fees to ac­tions tak­en by the bank’s new­ly-ap­point­ed board, most of whom were se­lect­ed by the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Lo­cal ex­perts agree that while mov­ing ser­vices like the pur­chase of PTSC bus tick­ets and pen­sion pay­ments to dig­i­tal plat­forms is im­por­tant, these are on­ly ba­by steps com­pared to what is hap­pen­ing in oth­er coun­tries.

As the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) marked its 29th mile­stone on Sat­ur­day, the or­gan­i­sa­tion stands as a tes­ta­ment to the re­silience and adapt­abil­i­ty re­quired to nav­i­gate the volatile wa­ters of mod­ern fi­nance.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says this coun­try stands to be the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ry of BP’s Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, ar­gu­ing that, re­gard­less of up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty, the coun­try re­mains cen­tral to mon­e­tise any near or cross-bor­der gas.

As Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd im­ple­ment­ed an in­crease in fees on Fri­day, the Cen­tral Bank dis­closed it does not reg­u­late com­mer­cial bank charges in T&T di­rect­ly, as its “leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty to reg­u­late fees and charges is de­fined by sec­tion 44A(1) of the Cen­tral Bank Act and is lim­it­ed to fix­ing max­i­mum and min­i­mum in­ter­est rates, fees and charges on loans, ad­vances and oth­er cred­it fa­cil­i­ties.”

The board of pub­licly list­ed TTNGL on Sat­ur­day an­nounced that it in­tends to pro­vide share­hold­ers with the op­tion to re­ceive div­i­dend pay­ment in ei­ther US dol­lars or TT dol­lars.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty has grant­ed a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) for a Mar­riott-brand­ed ho­tel and re­sort at Rocky Point, Mt Irvine, To­ba­go, mark­ing a key step for a project aimed at ex­pand­ing the is­land’s tourism ca­pac­i­ty.

Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen says the state com­pa­ny has re­in­forced its po­si­tion in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive nat­ur­al gas mar­ket af­ter sign­ing a new sup­ply con­tract with EOG Re­sources Trinidad Ltd on Fri­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port of SpaiThe agree­ment, con­clud­ed eight months ahead of sched­ule, re­news an ex­ist­ing arrange­ment due to ex­pire on De­cem­ber 31 and se­cures gas sup­ply for the next two years.

New­ly in­stalled pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Karen Yip Chuck, has said while cus­tomer con­cerns about the in­crease in the bank’s fees are valid, there has been a “com­plex and cost­ly en­vi­ron­ment” cre­at­ed by cyb­ser­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and reg­u­la­tions re­quired for an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing frame­works.

Just one day be­fore the Re­pub­lic Bank was set to in­tro­duce in­creased bank­ing fees for cus­tomers Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (RFHL), an­nounced prof­its at­trib­ut­able to its eq­ui­ty hold­ers of $1.07 bil­lion for the first half of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year.

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai took the Bank’s se­nior lead­er­ship to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) last Fri­day, sharp­en­ing fo­cus on To­ba­go-spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy and clos­ing long-stand­ing da­ta gaps that have con­strained plan­ning.