The Gov­ern­ment has paid more than $293 mil­lion in fu­el sub­si­dies for au­to­mo­tive diesel so far this year, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries in a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­sponse.

Last month’s earth­quake which dev­as­tat­ed north­ern Venezuela leav­ing over 5,000 dead and bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age must be a wake up call for T&T.

For­eign ex­change short­ages, a lim­it­ed do­mes­tic mar­ket and the rapid rise of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence are forc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es to re­think how they com­pete. Busi­ness con­sul­tant Ger­ald Llanos be­lieves com­pa­nies that con­tin­ue re­ly­ing sole­ly on the lo­cal econ­o­my risk falling be­hind, ar­gu­ing that earn­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy over­seas and em­brac­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­dence (AI) have be­come busi­ness ne­ces­si­ties rather than op­tion­al strate­gies.

With Eman­ci­pa­tion Day just past, imag­ine an is­land with a church, a ceme­tery and chil­dren run­ning be­neath co­conut trees. Fam­i­lies have lived there for gen­er­a­tions and their dead lie with­in earshot of the sea. Then, in dis­tant cap­i­tals, men un­fold a map and de­cide that the is­land is strate­gi­cal­ly in­dis­pens­able. Its peo­ple are told, per­haps not in words, but un­mis­tak­ably in pol­i­cy, that their homes ob­struct se­cu­ri­ty, their his­to­ry can be fold­ed in­to a suit­case, and their be­long­ings mat­ter less than a mil­i­tary base.

The open­ing of Pen­ny­wise’s newest and largest re­tail lo­ca­tion at Pen­ny­wise Plaza at the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate has be­come an­oth­er sig­nal that busi­ness­es are re­gain­ing con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said yes­ter­day.

The yacht­ing sec­tor is step­ping up its dri­ve to at­tract ex­port-ori­ent­ed in­vest­ment, with a new elec­tron­ic clear­ance sys­tem.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) gen­er­at­ed $1.52 bil­lion in prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2026, as the re­gion­al bank­ing group con­tin­ued to grow earn­ings de­spite glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty.

Con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion be­tween le­gal no­tices and in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion codes led to last’s week’s sud­den re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the mild hy­brids.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go faces a grow­ing risk of a cred­it rat­ing down­grade, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment is down­play­ing con­cerns raised by Stan­dard & Poor’s (S&P) and fail­ing to ad­dress deep­er weak­ness­es in the econ­o­my.

Last week, I ex­plained eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion through in­vest­ment port­fo­lio con­struc­tion. The point was pro­duc­ing oil, nat­ur­al gas, LNG, am­mo­nia and methanol does give Trinidad and To­ba­go sev­er­al sources of in­come. How­ev­er, these ma­jor eco­nom­ic en­gines re­main tied to gas avail­abil­i­ty, com­mod­i­ty prices and the same glob­al in­dus­tri­al cy­cle, which means we are chang­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties in the port­fo­lio with­out chang­ing enough of what can cause it to fall. That is why we re­main locked in a boom-bust cy­cle.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Roodal Mooni­lal and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy Ernesto Ke­sar yes­ter­day held dis­cus­sions with a del­e­ga­tion from the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port of Spain, led by Mr Philip Kern, chargé d’af­faires.

A year ago, a busi­ness con­nec­tion in con­grat­u­lat­ing me for a per­son­al ac­com­plish­ment, de­scribed me as a pra­ca­d­e­m­ic. At the time of his com­ments, the word pra­ca­d­e­m­ic was not fa­mil­iar to me. Us­ing my ap­proach of re­search to ac­quire knowl­edge, I de­cid­ed to look up the de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word pra­ca­d­e­m­ic, sought to find out who qual­i­fies to be called a pra­ca­d­e­m­ic, and to un­der­stand why pra­ca­d­e­mics are valu­able to so­ci­ety.