The Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T, Mr. Lar­ry Howai, has sug­gest­ed that the idling of Methanex’s Ti­tan methanol plant need not re­sult in a net loss of for­eign ex­change to this coun­try; that gas freed by the shut­down could be di­vert­ed to LNG or oth­er petro­chem­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties, po­ten­tial­ly gen­er­at­ing equal or greater earn­ings for whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny(NGC) and the coun­try. With re­spect to Mr. Howai, this view, while not with­out the­o­ret­i­cal ba­sis, rep­re­sents the most op­ti­mistic of sev­er­al pos­si­ble out­comes and rests on mar­ket con­di­tions and com­mer­cial choic­es that are by no means guar­an­teed to ma­te­ri­alise.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the Gov­ern­ment will move to en­gage Nestlé of­fi­cials, fol­low­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny an­nounc­ing this week that it is re­view­ing its op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go as part of a wider glob­al re­struc­tur­ing.

NCB Mer­chant Bank (T&T) said yes­ter­day the US$2 mil­lion that was seized by T&T Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cials last month is the prop­er­ty of the bank and “re­lates to a trans­ac­tion con­duct­ed in the or­di­nary course of busi­ness with an­oth­er reg­u­lat­ed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.”

Courts Op­ti­cal has en­tered in­to a char­i­ta­ble col­lab­o­ra­tion with Unit­ed Way Trinidad and To­ba­go.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young says the fir­ing of his client, one of three fired se­nior man­agers at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), is noth­ing more than po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion.  

Nestlé has be­gun a strate­gic re­view of its Trinidad and To­ba­go op­er­a­tions as part of a wider glob­al re­struc­tur­ing, with lo­cal em­ploy­ees be­ing told yes­ter­day the com­pa­ny is ex­plor­ing the pos­si­ble sale of its dairy and juices busi­ness .

The Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day in­di­cat­ed that it is seek­ing to bor­row up to US$750 mil­lion ($5.09 bil­lion) on the the in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­ket for "the fi­nanc­ing of gen­er­al de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go or of re­pay­ing bor­row­ings ef­fect­ed for the gen­er­al de­vel­op­ment."

Lo­cal re­tail chain Presto has reaf­firmed its con­fi­dence in T&T's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, as it de­clined to com­ment on the ar­rest of Blue Wa­ters founder Do­minic Hadeed, 52, his wife Genevieve Hadeed, 42, and her aunt Star Sab­ga, 69.

An Ar­gen­tine lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny, Ax­ion­log, is bet­ting that what many busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go throw away can be­come a valu­able ex­port.

CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Dr Vashti Guyadeen is warn­ing di­rec­tors of boards that they must pre­pare their busi­ness­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions for the un­cer­tain­ties of a “volatile” world.

There are num­bers that look small and be­have large. If you want to be good with mon­ey and to be on top of your per­son­al fi­nances you should take the time to un­der­stand this re­al­i­ty.

There is a myth in en­tre­pre­neur­ship, sup­port­ed by sto­ries about how younger peo­ple start ven­tures. Mark Zucker­berg was 19 when he start­ed Face­book. Bill Gates was 21 when he start­ed Mi­crosoft; co-founder Paul Allen was 23. Steve Jobs was 21 when he co-found­ed Ap­ple. Yet they’re ex­cep­tions, not the rule.