In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Trot­ters said, “Af­ter five in­cred­i­ble years of chal­lenges, growth and un­for­get­table mo­ments, Trot­ters Gulf City will be clos­ing its doors on Sun­day, No­vem­ber 2nd."

The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, to­geth­er with a pro­duc­tive work­force, re­mains one of the main dri­vers of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, says Dr Mahin­dra Ramdeen, CEO of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA).

Econ­o­mist and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs said the dam­age suf­fered by Ja­maica as a re­sult of the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa serves as a stark re­minder of the grow­ing risks Caribbean economies face and the ur­gent need for greater na­tion­al and re­gion­al re­silience.

De­spite es­ca­lat­ing geopo­lit­i­cal fric­tion be­tween T&T and Venezuela, in­vestor con­fi­dence re­mains fun­da­men­tal­ly in­tact—at least in the long term—ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, An­tho­ny Bryan.

The Caribbean stands at a piv­otal mo­ment. Across the re­gion, coun­tries are mak­ing im­pres­sive strides in eco­nom­ic re­form, debt man­age­ment and cli­mate re­silience. Yet, the path to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment re­mains steep, marked by per­sis­tent chal­lenges —cli­mate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, lim­it­ed fis­cal space and un­even ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ties. With an av­er­age growth rate of around 2.5 per cent over the past 15 years, econ­o­mists have warned that the re­gion’s ca­pac­i­ty to con­tain and ul­ti­mate­ly re­duce lev­els of pover­ty need a boost.

Ja­son Julien has been of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings ef­fec­tive from Oc­to­ber 22, 2025, “con­sis­tent with the pub­lished an­nounce­ments made on April 4, 2025 and Au­gust 27, 2025.

In­no­va­tion, the cre­ation of val­ue for or­gan­i­sa­tions is fast be­com­ing the new cur­ren­cy of com­pet­i­tive­ness. Across the Caribbean, con­tin­u­ous change is ev­i­dent in in­dus­tries in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial ser­vices, en­er­gy, agri­cul­ture, tourism, and tech­nol­o­gy. An in­creas­ing num­ber of or­gan­i­sa­tions are rec­og­niz­ing the role of in­no­va­tion in nav­i­gat­ing change and in dri­ving growth. How­ev­er, de­spite the en­thu­si­as­tic dis­cus­sions on the sub­ject, few have tak­en the steps to en­sure that the work­force and lead­er­ship cul­ture need­ed to sus­tain in­no­va­tion is cre­at­ed.

On Mon­day, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro an­nounced that his ad­min­is­tra­tion had agreed to sus­pend all the en­er­gy (nat­ur­al gas) agree­ments be­tween his coun­try and T&T.

Bud­gets tell us how a gov­ern­ment in­tends to spend. Gov­er­nance tells us whether that spend­ing will stand up to scruti­ny. This year’s Bud­get, with lit­tle fan­fare, in­tro­duced two new en­ti­ties, the Fi­nan­cial Over­sight and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (FOAC) and the Eco­nom­ic Re­silience Coun­cil (ERC) meant to bring dis­ci­pline and fore­sight to the front end of de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers are brac­ing for po­ten­tial fall­out af­ter a pow­er­ful cat­e­go­ry five hur­ri­cane struck Ja­maica, caus­ing wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion and rais­ing con­cerns about the con­ti­nu­ity of re­gion­al trade and busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

De­spite the in­crease in some al­co­holic bev­er­ages fol­low­ing the 2026 bud­get state­ment two weeks ago, econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon does not ex­pect to see a de­cline in pur­chas­es, es­pe­cial­ly as the coun­try en­ters the Christ­mas sea­son at the end of next month.

T&T is a ma­jor glob­al play­er in the am­mo­nia mar­ket, be­ing one of the largest ex­porters of the com­mod­i­ty world­wide. In 2024, the coun­try’s 11 fa­cil­i­ties, op­er­at­ed by four pro­duc­ers Pro­man, Nu­trien, Yara, and Pt Lisas Ni­tro­gen (PLNL) pro­duced just over four mil­lion met­ric tons of am­mo­nia. Pro­man is the largest pro­duc­er, ac­count­ing for 38 per cent of the na­tion’s out­put, fol­lowed by Nu­trien at 31 per cent, Yara at 19 per cent, and PLNL at 11%.