Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Kennedy Swarats­ingh is in Paraguay to lead T&T’s del­e­ga­tion at the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s (IDB) an­nu­al meet­ings.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor are ac­tive­ly chan­nel­ing in­vest­ments in­to mod­ern tech­nolo­gies like AI, drones, pre­ci­sion ir­ri­ga­tion and dig­i­tal plat­forms to en­hance agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, re­silience, and food se­cu­ri­ty. These ef­forts ad­dress chal­lenges such as high costs, lim­it­ed dig­i­tal ac­cess and cli­mate risks faced by small­hold­er farm­ers, align­ing with na­tion­al plans for tech-dri­ven growth. The 2026 PSIP al­lo­cates funds for agri-tech un­der agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and in­fra­struc­ture, where a small por­tion is used for ir­ri­ga­tion, land de­vel­op­ment, and tech ini­tia­tives with­in a $1.13 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion.

The phrase los­ing mon­ey to make mon­ey has tak­en on a lit­er­al mean­ing for the Cen­tral Bank, giv­en that every five-cent piece pro­duced re­sults in a net loss for the Trea­sury. High met­al prices and mint­ing fees have made the coin’s pro­duc­tion un­sus­tain­able.

Last Sun­day af­ter­noon, I was sit­ting at a ta­ble just out­side the restau­rant at the far end of the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park in To­ba­go, when I was ap­proached by a man who asked me if I was Wil­son. I said I was and asked him his name, which he gave me. He in­di­cat­ed that he is a re­tired pub­lic ser­vant, who knew my name from read­ing this col­umn. He told me he had re­ceived his lump sum for his years of ser­vice and al­so gets a month­ly pen­sion, which he said did not go far enough be­cause the cost of liv­ing was ris­ing, but his pen­sion was not.

For the last sev­er­al years, T&T has been hav­ing the same na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion: for­eign ex­change.

In board­rooms, min­istries, and even ca­su­al con­ver­sa­tion, non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions (NPOs) and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) are of­ten spo­ken about as if they sit out­side the “re­al econ­o­my.” They are framed as char­i­ta­ble, well-mean­ing and im­por­tant but some­how sep­a­rate from busi­ness. This per­cep­tion is not on­ly out­dat­ed; it is eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­ac­cu­rate and, in some cas­es, dam­ag­ing.

I am sure you have been fol­low­ing the news re­lat­ed to the con­flict in the Mid­dle East. The com­bat ex­changes be­tween Iran on one side and the Unit­ed States and Is­rael on the oth­er, have pro­duced an in­ter­est­ing but I ex­pect un­no­ticed asym­me­try. While the fo­cus is of­ten on the mis­sile counts and the in­ter­cept rates, there is a deep­er un­der­ly­ing is­sue that gets no at­ten­tion be­cause it is fair­ly tech­ni­cal. Ex­cept that the as­so­ci­at­ed con­cepts al­so im­pact your per­son­al fi­nan­cial life.

As tech­nol­o­gy be­comes more ad­vanced, the like­li­hood that a young per­son will will­ing­ly pick up a pen or pen­cil and write some­thing down is slim. With easy ac­cess to apps that can quick­ly tran­scribe lec­tures and voice notes, who cares about writ­ing and pen­man­ship any­more?

You may have no­ticed it but did not la­bel it. It has a name: a sim­ple but pro­found­ly im­por­tant con­cept that could de­ter­mine your en­joy­ment of life. The af­ford­abil­i­ty cri­sis is im­per­cep­ti­ble, eat­ing away at your pur­chas­ing pow­er slow­ly and re­duc­ing your abil­i­ty to take care of the next gen­er­a­tion. What can you do? Since I have been writ­ing a col­umn on en­tre­pre­neur­ship, you guessed it, I have a so­lu­tion that match­es my fo­cus.

A fall in share prices on the lo­cal mar­ket and shifts by in­vestors to­wards high­er-yield­ing in­stru­ments have weighed on eq­ui­ty val­u­a­tions, even as Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go re­port­ed mixed fi­nan­cial re­sults.The is­sue of the de­clin­ing price of Sco­tia­bank’s stock was raised by a share­hold­er at the bank’s 56th an­nu­al meet­ing of share­hold­ers yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

The lat­est State of Emer­gency (SoE) comes at a time when the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is un­der at­tack.

In a bid to push growth amongst Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es in the cre­ative sec­tor, three busi­ness­es were of­fi­cial­ly signed on for the “Buy lo­cal, Build Trin­ba­go” char­ter yes­ter­day.