The fall­out fol­low­ing the fi­as­co that turned out to be the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val has left many with­in the en­ter­tain­ment fra­ter­ni­ty en­gag­ing in some re­flec­tion.

While the Health Min­istry con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the new COVID vari­ant which has not yet reached lo­cal shores, but has been de­tect­ed in coun­tries vis­it­ed by lo­cals, econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon is warn­ing there can be an eco­nom­ic fall­out should the virus reach T&T.

The adop­tion of elec­tric ve­hi­cles in this coun­try has sig­nif­i­cant­ly grown and one rea­son is that elec­tri­cal charg­ers and parts are now ex­empt­ed from pay­ing cus­toms du­ty, val­ue-added tax and on­line pur­chase tax. Those mea­sures came in­to ef­fect in Jan­u­ary.

Two months on from “Lib­er­a­tion Day”, and it is ev­i­dent that the volatil­i­ty and un­cer­tain­ty in mar­kets since the turn of the year is more like­ly to con­tin­ue than not. The month of April brought world­wide fear and pan­ic as the US im­posed sig­nif­i­cant tar­iffs on im­ports from coun­tries around the world, notwith­stand­ing the ex­is­tence of trade agree­ments with those coun­tries. Chi­na, Cana­da and Mex­i­co, were amongst the most sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed, with Chi­na in par­tic­u­lar re­spond­ing by im­pos­ing re­tal­ia­to­ry tar­iffs.

Re­pub­lic Group has part­nered with Med­corp Ltd as the lead stock­bro­ker for its ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO).

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) says it is one step clos­er to com­plet­ing the buy­out of the re­main­ing shares of Cay­man Na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CNC) af­ter se­cur­ing the min­i­mum thresh­old of ac­cep­tance to ad­vance the trans­ac­tion.

The Cen­tral Bank says it is lim­it­ed when it comes to the dis­clo­sure of cer­tain in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing top users of forex.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day that Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Dr Alvin Hi­laire, is re­fus­ing to di­vulge in­for­ma­tion on the top users of for­eign ex­change in this coun­try.

The trade union rep­re­sent­ing An­gos­tu­ra work­ers hopes good sense will pre­vail fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of the com­pa­ny's board ear­li­er this week.

Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) and NCB Fi­nan­cial Group Lim­it­ed (NCBFG) are plan­ning to raise US$500 mil­lion and US$300 mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly, in the in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­kets to re­fi­nance ex­ist­ing debt.

Mod­erni­sa­tion of elec­tric­i­ty grids and joint in­vest­ment is a part of the con­ver­sa­tion that Caribbean coun­tries should be hav­ing to move away from their fos­sil fu­el pasts and in­to re­new­able en­er­gy fu­tures, ac­cord­ing to Bar­ba­dos Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and Busi­ness, Lisa Cum­mins.

ANSA McAL Lim­it­ed is look­ing in­to in­creas­ing the re­cov­ery of green­house gas­es, in­clud­ing hy­dro­gen, from its Caribbean plants.