Türkiye’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Bengü Yiğit­gü­den, has in­vit­ed T&T’s busi­ness sec­tor to build com­mer­cial ties with Türkiye, one of the world’s largest economies by Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP).

The NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG) an­nounced yeste­day that its chair­man and ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er, Michael Lee-Chin, in­di­cat­ed he is tak­ing a leave of ab­sence ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly “to al­low him to fo­cus on cer­tain press­ing busi­ness and per­son­al mat­ters.”

Some­times there is a need to stay on a par­tic­u­lar top­ic to em­pha­sise its im­por­tance. Last week I dealt with the is­sue of re­tire­ment and whether it is even prac­ti­cal in this day and age to con­sid­er re­tire­ment in the tra­di­tion­al sense as some­thing to as­pire to­wards. The fo­cus of last week was on you and the things you should con­sid­er when as­sess­ing your re­tire­ment needs and op­tions. To­day we are go­ing to look at this top­ic in a broad­er sense and the head­winds to your re­tire­ment life. You will need to adapt to this re­al­i­ty.

In a re­cent T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle, colum­nist Raphael John-Lall wrote: “The Gov­ern­ment has spent $54 bil­lion on the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty over the last eight years, with at least $828 mil­lions of that fig­ure go­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), yet cit­i­zens are gripped by fear and forced to watch over their shoul­ders in their homes and pub­lic spaces as crim­i­nals have be­come more brazen in their at­tacks. Not even ba­bies and tod­dlers are es­cap­ing the gun­men’s fire. Even Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view, has de­clared to the Sun­day Guardian that he un­der­stood the trau­ma and fear that cit­i­zens are liv­ing un­der and said the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing on so­lu­tions.” 

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd, the hold­ing com­pa­ny for Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and many oth­er com­pa­nies, is the largest, in­dige­nous com­mer­cial bank hold­ing en­ti­ty in the Caribbean.

Sev­er­al months af­ter Car­ni­val 2023 end­ed, an ad­ver­tise­ment made for the sea­son by An­gos­tu­ra has land­ed the com­pa­ny in hot wa­ter af­ter a New York-based record ex­ec­u­tive claimed the rum and bit­ters man­u­fac­tur­er used a sam­ple with­out seek­ing per­mis­sion from his com­pa­ny Char­lie’s Records.

Caribbean min­is­ters and se­nior ad­vis­ers with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion signed the Port-of-Spain Com­mit­ment on Dig­i­tal In­te­gra­tion in Trinidad last week.

The terms and con­di­tions of the new CEO of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, Erik Kesku­la, in­clude a base salary of $180,000 per month plus var­i­ous oth­er cash and non-cash ben­e­fits.

More ro­bust re­search on mat­ters re­lat­ed to Caribbean tourism de­vel­op­ment is need­ed to dri­ve the in­dus­try for­ward in a way that builds re­silien­cy for fu­ture shocks, says Acol­la Cameron, Dean in Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences and se­nior lec­tur­er in tourism at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vice of T&T (TSTT), Lisa Agard, dis­closed yes­ter­day that re­gion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion providers are plan­ning to hold ne­go­ti­a­tions with glob­al tech heavy­weights such as Ap­ple, Google, Ama­zon, Net­flix and Meta to help the Caribbean op­er­a­tors to off­set the cost of pro­vid­ing broad­band da­ta.

Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA), Mark Edghill, is sig­nalling that com­mis­sions on prop­er­ty trans­ac­tions may be head­ing high­er.

A pro­pos­al from an in­de­pen­dent mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team has pre­sent­ed a strat­e­gy for de­vel­op­ing a wind in­dus­try in T&T cov­er­ing the pe­ri­od un­til 2035.