Wednes­day’s de­ci­sion by Stan­dard & Poor’s to up­hold T&T’s in­vest­ment-grade rat­ing of BBB- is a good sign, but ex­perts note that the rat­ings agency’s de­ci­sion to main­tain the coun­try out­look at neg­a­tive is a con­cern.

The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) has con­firmed an­oth­er change to its board of di­rec­tors, with Nadi­ra Parb­hu­di­al re­sign­ing ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 22, re­duc­ing the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny’s board to three mem­bers.

Ray­mond & Pierre Ltd has ap­point­ed char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or Ross Dar­ling­ton as an as­so­ciate di­rec­tor, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 21, the com­pa­ny an­nounced in a news re­lease.
Dar­ling­ton joined the firm in Feb­ru­ary 2024 and has been based at its Port of Spain of­fice. His ap­point­ment comes as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to ex­pand its lead­er­ship team to sup­port grow­ing de­mand for pro­fes­sion­al prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion and con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.
In the re­lease, Ray­mond & Pierre man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Afra Ray­mond said Dar­ling­ton's ap­point­ment strength­ens the firm's tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise.
"Ross brings ex­act­ly the kind of tech­ni­cal rigour and mar­ket in­sight our clients re­ly on. As de­mand for pro­fes­sion­al prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to grow, hav­ing some­one of his cal­i­bre join our lead­er­ship team strength­ens what we can of­fer across the re­gion."
Dar­ling­ton holds an As­so­ciate De­gree in Busi­ness Man­age­ment from the UWI School of Busi­ness and Ap­plied Stud­ies (ROYTEC), a BA (Hons) in Busi­ness Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sun­der­land and an MSc in Re­al Es­tate Man­age­ment and De­vel­op­ment from Heri­ot-Watt Uni­ver­si­ty in Ed­in­burgh.
He qual­i­fied as char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or in 2020 and is al­so a reg­is­tered val­uer.
The re­lease said Dar­ling­ton has worked with both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al firms and has al­so served the In­sti­tute of Sur­vey­ors of Trinidad and To­ba­go, hold­ing the po­si­tion of as­sis­tant trea­sur­er in 2022.
Ray­mond & Pierre said its roots date back to 1972, when Eu­gene M Ray­mond es­tab­lished Eu­gene M Ray­mond & Com­pa­ny af­ter re­tir­ing as Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions.
The firm said the part­ner­ship with Ralph A Pierre was formed in 1977 fol­low­ing his re­tire­ment as Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions. It was in­cor­po­rat­ed as Ray­mond & Pierre Ltd in Jan­u­ary 2000.
The com­pa­ny said it is now the old­est and largest pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice of char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­ors, re­al es­tate agents and prop­er­ty con­sul­tants in T&T.

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein is con­vinced that cruise tourism can help di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and bring much need­ed for­eign ex­change in­to the coun­try.

De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Ltd (DFL) says ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing is no longer the biggest ob­sta­cle fac­ing many small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, ar­gu­ing in­stead that weak busi­ness mod­els are pre­vent­ing en­tre­pre­neurs from se­cur­ing the cap­i­tal they need.

On Ju­ly 10, Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T, Lar­ry Howai—ac­com­pa­nied by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal—met with key stake­hold­ers in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor. The meet­ing, ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Cen­tral Bank on the same day, “cen­tred on mea­sures to ad­dress on­go­ing for­eign ex­change (forex) chal­lenges. The meet­ing was con­struc­tive and col­lab­o­ra­tive, with par­tic­i­pants ex­press­ing sup­port for a se­ries of near-term ini­tia­tives to im­prove for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

The con­ver­sa­tion around ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go has been amus­ing, to say the least. It is amus­ing be­cause much of the pop­u­la­tion has jumped straight to the end of the sto­ry with­out pay­ing at­ten­tion to the process re­quired to get there. De­pend­ing on who you lis­ten to, this coun­try is ei­ther about to be­come a cen­tre for ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence or is prepar­ing to sur­ren­der its elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter, land and eco­nom­ic fu­ture to for­eign in­ter­ests. Nei­ther con­clu­sion is sup­port­ed by where the pro­posed projects cur­rent­ly stand.

Re­newed diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment be­tween T&T and Venezuela has re­vived hopes that long-de­layed cross-bor­der gas projects could move clos­er to re­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, econ­o­mists and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan say im­proved gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment re­la­tions are on­ly the first step, warn­ing that com­mer­cial, le­gal and geopo­lit­i­cal hur­dles must still be over­come be­fore projects such as Drag­on and Lo­ran-Man­a­tee can de­liv­er mean­ing­ful ben­e­fits.

The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance sys­tem was es­tab­lished by The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Act, No. 35 of 1971, which came in­to ef­fect on April 10, 1972. The na­tion­al in­sur­ance sys­tem (NIS) is a manda­to­ry sys­tem, based on:

Over the past few weeks, many of you have fol­lowed my pre­vi­ous guide and suc­cess­ful­ly opened a Charles Schwab In­ter­na­tion­al bro­ker­age ac­count.

For decades, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic suc­cess has been close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the en­er­gy sec­tor. While that lega­cy has served the coun­try well, the re­al­i­ties of to­day’s glob­al econ­o­my de­mand a broad­er and more re­silient ap­proach to growth. The fu­ture of our na­tion de­pends not on­ly on our nat­ur­al re­sources, but in­creas­ing­ly on the in­ge­nu­ity, ex­per­tise and in­no­va­tion of our peo­ple.

This is the time of the year when work­ing par­ents source the best camps to send their chil­dren; fa­cil­i­ties at which they know their off­spring will be safe and will learn some type of use­ful skill.