Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad has called on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) to com­mer­cialise its lo­cal­ly de­vel­oped sci­ence kits, propos­ing the cre­ation of a ded­i­cat­ed busi­ness unit to man­u­fac­ture and ex­port them across the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

Ear­li­er this year, the En­er­gy Cham­ber re­leased a map that showed the up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place in the coun­try. This was first re­leased at the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary 2025.

A re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor body has pro­ject­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) stands to lose an es­ti­mat­ed US$291.9 mil­lion ($1.98 bil­lion) in po­ten­tial an­nu­al ex­port rev­enue as a re­sult of the im­po­si­tion of the 15 per cent tar­iff on this coun­try’s ex­ports to the Unit­ed States (US).

The news of Exxon­Mo­bil and the T&T Gov­ern­ment sign­ing a pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tract to de­vel­op the ul­tra deep­wa­ter block (UD-1) has gar­nered glob­al at­ten­tion. With­in a month, the lat­est deep wa­ter bid round, where 26 deep­wa­ter blocks have been of­fered, will al­so close. There is a gen­uine buzz with­in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor as many view the deep­wa­ter fron­tier as the next chap­ter in the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor sto­ry. De­vel­op­ment of these ex­plo­ration blocks, over the medi­um and long term, is al­so a strate­gic im­per­a­tive. Cur­rent­ly, the coun­try needs to ar­rest the de­cline in oil and gas pro­duc­tion. New gas pro­duc­tion from blocks of­fered will help stem this de­cline and sup­ply more nat­ur­al gas to petro­chem­i­cal plants op­er­at­ing in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. De­vel­op­ing this acreage can al­so lead to new busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties. There are be­tween 400 and 500 lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­nies that can of­fer their ser­vices in de­vel­op­ing oil and gas blocks and con­tribute to em­ploy­ment and tax­es. But while ex­ploit­ing these blocks is a con­duit to rev­enue and op­por­tu­ni­ties, deep­wa­ter de­vel­op­ments are in­her­ent­ly riski­er and there are sev­er­al rungs to climb be­fore com­pa­nies be­gin to pro­duce oil or gas.

Af­ter the nar­ra­tive that the last Gov­ern­ment cre­at­ed to close down the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James is warn­ing the pub­lic to be wary of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s crit­i­cisms of the fi­nan­cial per­for­mance of state-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL).

AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings Ltd will be list­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change (TTSE) on Fri­day, Au­gust 29, 2025.

It is 2025, and de­spite claims of progress, T&T re­mains stuck in a cy­cle of emp­ty re­forms and bu­reau­crat­ic stag­na­tion when it comes to cannabis. While some cel­e­brate the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of 30 grams for per­son­al use, the deep­er struc­tur­al in­jus­tices con­tin­ue — block­ing eco­nom­ic growth, cul­tur­al recog­ni­tion, and pub­lic health progress. Cannabis re­mains a po­lit­i­cal pawn, se­lec­tive­ly tol­er­at­ed but not tru­ly lib­er­at­ed.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) has ex­pand­ed its share­hold­ing in Cay­man Na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CNC).

For­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire has in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to ini­ti­ate le­gal pro­ceed­ings against the State for the un­law­ful re­vo­ca­tion of his ap­point­ment in June this year.

T&T’s in­fla­tion rate for Ju­ly 2025, which mea­sures the per­cent­age change in the all-items in­dex for the month of Ju­ly 2025 over Ju­ly 2024, was 1.5 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est da­ta re­leased by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO).

Re­pub­lic Bank re­duced the US-dol­lar spend­ing lim­it on some of its cred­it cards by 50 per cent last week as a re­sult of in­creased de­mand for for­eign ex­change and the prospect of re­duced short-term in­flows of for­eign ex­change, a Cen­tral Bank of­fi­cial said yes­ter­day.

Sev­er­al cus­tomers of ship­ping com­pa­ny Trin­ba­go Ex­press are rais­ing con­cerns over the abrupt clo­sure of its Trinidad branch­es and a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­gard­ing un­de­liv­ered car­go.