Trinidad and To­ba­go is in dan­ger of fac­ing in­creased ex­port costs to the Unit­ed King­dom as a re­sult of the pend­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion of the UK Car­bon Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nism (CBAM).

Karen Dar­basie re­mains the sub­stan­tive group CEO of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings un­til Oc­to­ber 21, 2025, when she will re­tire. That is ac­cord­ing to an all-staff mem­o­ran­dum is­sued by the bank’s chair­man, An­tho­ny Smart, fol­low­ing a spe­cial board meet­ing held yes­ter­day. The all-staff mem­o­ran­dum, which was seen by Guardian Me­dia, states, “Our group CEO Karen Dar­basie, has pro­ceed­ed on ap­proved va­ca­tion leave for the pe­ri­od Au­gust 21, 2025, and will re­tire ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 21, 2025.”

The Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go has said its mem­ber­ship is fac­ing a bal­anc­ing act con­cern­ing the im­por­ta­tion of food.

Once the heart­beat of Port-of-Spain’s nightlife, Ari­api­ta Av­enue has dimmed not just in en­er­gy, but in foot traf­fic, se­cu­ri­ty and in­vestor con­fi­dence.
What was once a bustling strip of bars, restau­rants and en­ter­tain­ment is now fac­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of rep­u­ta­tion: one in­creas­ing­ly marred by con­cerns over crime and safe­ty.

Re­pub­lic Bank econ­o­mist, Garvin Joe­field, is warn­ing of far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for the do­mes­tic econ­o­my of the rev­e­la­tion that T&T stands to lose US$291.9 mil­lion in po­ten­tial an­nu­al ex­port rev­enue fol­low­ing the im­po­si­tion of a 15 per cent tar­iff on its ex­ports to the Unit­ed States.

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.

Re­cent­ly, the com­pa­ny and its af­fil­i­ate com­pa­ny, Ad­ver­tis­ing and Print­ing Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (APCTT), com­mis­sioned a large roll-to-roll print­er, a state-of-the-art ma­chine ca­pa­ble of print­ing ban­ners as large as 20 feet wide by 250 feet long. Pre­vi­ous­ly, ban­ners of that size would re­quire two print­ed ban­ners to be com­bined. The cus­tom-built print­er can print a 5000 square feet ban­ner in an hour.

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.

As our politi­cians de­bate pro­grammes such as Mi­LAT, MY­PART, and the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC), these ini­tia­tives are of­ten pre­sent­ed as op­por­tu­ni­ties for vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple re­ceiv­ing skill de­vel­op­ment from mil­i­tary-led train­ing to agri­cul­tur­al projects. But the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion must move be­yond ask­ing whether these pro­grammes are mere­ly use­ful. The re­al ques­tion is: are they equip­ping these cit­i­zens with the skills need­ed for a rapid­ly chang­ing world? A world where tra­di­tion­al jobs are dis­ap­pear­ing, and emerg­ing fron­tier tech­nolo­gies such as AI, ro­bot­ics, and the In­ter­net of Things are re­shap­ing every in­dus­try. If we are not care­ful, we risk prepar­ing cit­i­zens for jobs that may not even ex­ist three to five years from now.

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).

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).