The bank­ing sec­tor re­mained in strong po­si­tion, with the en­er­gy sec­tor still stir­ring from progress con­cern­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Drag­on Gas field ex­plo­ration. There were al­so sig­nif­i­cant strides be­ing made in oth­er en­er­gy projects. How­ev­er, the wor­ry came from the fact that these projects were ex­pect­ed to con­tribute lat­er, rather than soon­er, as re­duced re­turns from the en­er­gy sec­tor cou­pled with in­creased ex­pen­di­ture in the year, had con­tin­ued to place pres­sure on T&T’s for­eign ex­change re­serves.

The old north Eu­ro­pean lan­guages had a word for the sci­ence of gov­ern­ment, state­craft, which is the art and dis­ci­pline of build­ing, run­ning, and adapt­ing the state.

In 2025, the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) ex­pe­ri­enced a ma­jor shift in its ad­min­is­tra­tive and fis­cal di­rec­tion, large­ly dri­ven by a change in lead­er­ship dur­ing a pe­ri­od of com­plex eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

En­er­gy pol­i­cy, geopol­i­tics and in­dus­tri­al up­heaval con­verged in 2025 to re­de­fine T&T’s eco­nom­ic land­scape. The year un­fold­ed as a study in con­trasts: ma­jor up­stream progress at home, a re­newed vote of con­fi­dence from a glob­al oil ma­jor, and, at the same time, the col­lapse of care­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed cross-bor­der gas arrange­ments and the ex­it of a long-stand­ing petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­er. To­geth­er, these de­vel­op­ments un­der­scored both the re­silience and fragili­ty of an econ­o­my still an­chored in nat­ur­al gas.

In­vestors on the lo­cal stock mar­ket ex­pe­ri­enced a fourth year of de­clin­ing share prices in 2025, pri­mar­i­ly due to a stag­nant econ­o­my, wan­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestor in­ter­est, re­duced trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ty and a strug­gling en­er­gy sec­tor.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has con­firmed that T&T is ex­plor­ing op­tions to main­tain op­er­a­tions at Nu­trien’s fa­cil­i­ty on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tract with the Cana­di­an petro­chem­i­cal gi­ant on Thurs­day.

Re­gion­al in­vestors be­gan 2026 con­fronting an ear­ly test of con­fi­dence af­ter three com­pa­nies linked to fi­nan­cial­ly trou­bled, Ja­maican-born in­vestor, Michael Lee-Chin, failed to make the first sched­uled pay­ment of US$94.1 mil­lion un­der a re­cent­ly ap­proved debt re­struc­tur­ing.

De­o­raj Ma­hase has been ap­point­ed to act as res­i­dent of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Plipde­co).

De­spite some promis­ing mo­ments in the en­er­gy sec­tor mid-year, the Cen­tral Bank not­ed there has been a no­tice­able slow­down in busi­ness in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the un­cer­tain­ty cre­at­ed by the ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) has re­port­ed a prof­it af­ter tax of $15.3 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025.

The fail­ure of the whol­ly State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to ne­go­ti­ate new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tracts with com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate will be prob­lem­at­ic for those op­er­a­tors, their cred­it rat­ings and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad & To­ba­go has hailed the gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to ac­cel­er­ate the ap­proval of en­er­gy projects.