Re­gion­al lender CIBC Caribbean has rolled out a ful­ly dig­i­tal sys­tem that al­lows small en­tre­pre­neurs to open busi­ness ac­counts on­line, cut­ting out pa­per­work and branch vis­its.
The bank’s new Busi­ness Bank­ing Dig­i­tal Client On­board­ing (DCO) fea­ture lets users com­plete the en­tire process from a mo­bile phone, tablet or com­put­er. Busi­ness own­ers can up­load doc­u­ments, ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion and build out their com­pa­ny pro­file at their own pace.
The plat­form is al­ready live in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lu­cia. It is ex­pect­ed to come to five ad­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, in the com­ing months.
Deepa Bou­caud, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Per­son­al and Busi­ness Bank­ing, CIBC Caribbean, said the sys­tem is built to re­move long-stand­ing bar­ri­ers that have frus­trat­ed small op­er­a­tors try­ing to for­malise their busi­ness­es.
“The new sys­tem is de­signed to re­move tra­di­tion­al bar­ri­ers to open­ing a busi­ness ac­count, pro­vid­ing en­tre­pre­neurs with a faster, sim­pler, and more trans­par­ent on­board­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, re­plac­ing pa­per­heavy re­quire­ments with stream­lined dig­i­tal in­ter­ac­tions. En­tre­pre­neurs can up­load re­quired doc­u­ments, ver­i­fy de­tails, and com­plete their busi­ness pro­file from any de­vice, at their own pace,” Bou­caud said.
One of the key changes tar­gets ear­ly-stage and mi­cro busi­ness­es that of­ten strug­gle to pro­duce for­mal fi­nan­cial state­ments. Bou­caud point­ed to the plat­form’s “dy­nam­ic fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty cap­ture,” which al­lows low-risk sole pro­pri­etors to sub­mit es­ti­mat­ed in­come and ex­pense fig­ures dig­i­tal­ly in­stead of au­dit­ed state­ments.
The sys­tem al­so walks ap­pli­cants through ju­ris­dic­tion-spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments, re­duc­ing er­rors and com­pli­ance gaps across dif­fer­ent mar­kets.
In­ter­nal­ly, the bank said the up­grade tight­ens An­ti-Mon­ey Laun­der­ing con­trols, im­proves da­ta qual­i­ty and cuts pro­cess­ing time. It al­so lays the ground­work for mul­ti-own­er on­board­ing, part­ner­ships, mer­chant ser­vices and broad­er prod­uct of­fer­ings.

The Bry­dens Group has an­nounced it is in the fi­nal stages of con­struc­tion of a new re­gion­al ware­house in T&T, a fa­cil­i­ty de­signed to an­chor its dis­tri­b­u­tion strat­e­gy across the south­ern Caribbean.

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) is call­ing for ur­gent clar­i­ty on the stalled Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion, warn­ing that de­spite im­proved crime da­ta, se­ri­ous vi­o­lence con­tin­ues to rat­tle the cap­i­tal.

Car­ni­val’s com­mer­cial en­gine is fac­ing a struc­tur­al reck­on­ing.  
Af­ter 77 years in op­er­a­tion, Sama­roo’s is open­ly ques­tion­ing whether it can con­tin­ue be­yond 2027 un­less there is de­ci­sive pol­i­cy in­ter­ven­tion to re­bal­ance what its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Steve Sama­roo, de­scribes as a lop­sided mar­ket­place tilt­ed to­wards im­port­ed, ready-made cos­tumes.
“This was our worst year in the busi­ness be­cause our sales de­clined sig­nif­i­cant­ly for dif­fer­ent rea­sons,” Sama­roo said, list­ing the im­por­ta­tion of fin­ished cos­tumes from Chi­na, for­eign ex­change con­straints, and ris­ing clear­ance costs among the pri­ma­ry pres­sures.
Sama­roo’s abil­i­ty to grow since COVID-19 has been sti­fled, by the larg­er, more re­source­ful bands im­port­ing com­plet­ed cos­tumes rather than sourc­ing fab­rics, wire, trims, and ac­ces­sories lo­cal­ly. That mod­el by­pass­es do­mes­tic sup­pli­ers and com­press­es mar­gins across the tra­di­tion­al val­ue chain.
“The cos­tume prices make it very chal­leng­ing and raise the ques­tion of whether we should con­tin­ue as a sup­pli­er,” he said. “If you’re pro­vid­ing a cos­tume ready-made from Chi­na, you don’t need the lo­cal labour and raw ma­te­ri­als in­put in­to a cos­tume here.”
The com­pa­ny once op­er­at­ed five lo­ca­tions, it is now down to two—its main branch at El So­cor­ro and a San Fer­nan­do out­let—af­ter clos­ing three since the pan­dem­ic.
He main­tained that he is ful­ly aware of the land­ed prices paid for those im­port­ed cos­tumes and be­lieves the ex­ist­ing 20 per cent du­ty is in­suf­fi­cient. “The re­sult­ing 20 per cent du­ty is min­i­mal and should be at least 200 per cent,” he said, propos­ing a slid­ing scale tied to lo­cal con­tent. “So the ques­tion is what per­cent­age of lo­cal in­put should be in the cos­tumes? No lo­cal in­put, then 500 per cent du­ty.”
For Sama­roo, the is­sue is not on­ly com­mer­cial but cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic. He frames Car­ni­val as an in­te­grat­ed ecosys­tem once pow­ered by de­sign­ers, crafts­men, wire ben­ders, dec­o­ra­tors, and seam­stress­es who col­lec­tive­ly gen­er­at­ed em­ploy­ment and ex­port­ed cre­ativ­i­ty. He points to lega­cy bands—such as Poi­son, Bar­barosa, Harts, Tri­ni Rev­ellers, Lega­cy/Leg­ends, D Mi­das, Mas­querde—and band­lead­ers like Raoul Garib, Wayne Berke­ley, Pe­ter Min­shall, Bri­an Mac Far­lane, Pe­ter Samuel, Neville Hinds, Owen Hinds, Jagges­sars, Kallicha­rans,  Zain­ool Mo­hammed as ar­chi­tects who helped put T&T on the world stage.
“We saw a lot of cre­ativ­i­ty, which we rarely see now in the larg­er bands but on­ly in the Kings and Queens, in­di­vid­u­als, and the tra­di­tion­al mas,” he said.

Tar­iffs, lo­cal con­tent and pol­i­cy di­rec­tion

Sama­roo is call­ing for an im­me­di­ate con­sul­ta­tion among sup­pli­ers, band lead­ers, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) and the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism to de­ter­mine the fu­ture ar­chi­tec­ture of the in­dus­try. In his view, Car­ni­val re­quires new con­di­tions to stim­u­late do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion be­fore the sup­ply base col­laps­es.

If US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio ac­cepts the in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis from 25 to 27 Feb­ru­ary, his pres­ence should be treat­ed as con­se­quen­tial.

Trav­el agen­cies in T&T are see­ing a greater num­ber of lo­cals want­i­ng to trav­el to Venezuela as ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela have eased and busi­ness ties in­crease.

Pic­ture a young en­tre­pre­neur in Ari­ma try­ing to or­der equip­ment from a sup­pli­er in Eu­rope.

With­in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), com­pris­ing 14 sov­er­eign mem­ber states, the “Trump Corol­lary” to the Mon­roe Doc­trine has elicit­ed two broad for­eign pol­i­cy re­ac­tions. For most of these small states, there is grow­ing con­cern about how its op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion is im­pact­ing their re­spec­tive in­ter­ests. For some oth­ers, not so much.

We end­ed the Part 1 with the cash mar­gin on a met­ric tonne of methanol be­ing US$56.20 to US$81.20 un­der op­ti­mal con­di­tions, in­clud­ing a good mar­ket price.

The coun­try’s in­fla­tion rate for Jan­u­ary 2026 stood at 0.7 per cent, mean­ing prices in Jan­u­ary 2026 were 0.7 per cent high­er than they were in Jan­u­ary 2025. This marks an in­crease from the pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od, when in­fla­tion mea­sured 0.4 per cent in De­cem­ber 2025 com­pared with De­cem­ber 2024.

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC), Ger­ald Ramdeen, says the state-owned nat­ur­al gas ag­gre­ga­tor is ne­go­ti­at­ing high­er prices with its down­stream cus­tomers and ex­pects to con­clude those agree­ments with­in the next month.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has re­ject­ed claims by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion that it has bro­ken new ground in re­gion­al en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion, ar­gu­ing that all sub­stan­tive ini­tia­tives with Guyana and Suri­name were ad­vanced un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment.