Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny Ltd (SFC) yes­ter­day an­nounced that two com­pa­nies it con­trols in the Caribbean are to merge, bring­ing Sagi­cor Group Ja­maica and Sagi­cor Life Inc un­der a sin­gle Caribbean hold­ing struc­ture.

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) yes­ter­day an­nounced the re­lease of the con­sumer price in­dex (CPI) for No­vem­ber 2025, high­light­ing a mod­est in­crease in in­fla­tion and no­table shifts across sev­er­al cat­e­gories of con­sumer spend­ing.

Gov­ern­ment achieved its ob­jec­tive yes­ter­day of elect­ing sev­en of its nom­i­nees to serve as di­rec­tors on the board of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), the largest fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny in the Caribbean re­gion.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira says last week’s ter­mi­na­tion of Navin Dook­er­an as CEO of the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of T&T (Ex­im­bank) may sig­nal the im­pend­ing end to con­ces­sion­al forex fi­nanc­ing for non-ex­port sec­tors, un­der­scor­ing the need for strate­gic ad­just­ments in eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is in Pana­ma City to at­tend meet­ings of the board of di­rec­tors and the XLVI Au­dit Com­mit­tee of CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, which be­gan yes­ter­day and con­tin­ues to­day.

Busi­ness lead­ers have all agreed that lo­cal and re­gion­al busi­ness­es must be pre­pared for all pos­si­ble out­comes in the es­ca­lat­ing con­flict be­tween the US and Venezuela.

T&T’s on­go­ing for­eign ex­change (forex) short­age, while pre­sent­ing im­me­di­ate chal­lenges like de­layed pay­ments and price fluc­tu­a­tions, can be strate­gi­cal­ly mit­i­gat­ed by shift­ing pro­cure­ment fo­cus to­ward the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

The pri­vate sec­tor is call­ing for greater con­sul­ta­tion with the gov­ern­ment as there con­tin­ues to be un­cer­tain­ty about pol­i­cy di­rec­tion.

Few in­dus­tries in T&T op­er­ate with mar­gins as thin and ex­pec­ta­tions as high as Car­ni­val. For mas­quer­ade bands, where the prod­uct is not sim­ply a cos­tum,e but an all-in­clu­sive, all-im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, every com­po­nent now sits un­der scruti­ny fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s 100 per cent hike in cus­toms and ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Gary Hunt said the com­pa­ny is in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports that a for­mer se­nior An­gos­tu­ra em­ploy­ee has launched her own ver­sion of the com­pa­ny’s fa­mous Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters.

The Moody’s rat­ings agency yes­ter­day kept the Gov­ern­ment’s longterm lo­cal and for­eign cur­ren­cy is­suer and se­nior un­se­cured rat­ings at Ba2, but changed the out­look to neg­a­tive to re­flect what it views as short-term down­side risks.

CIBC Caribbean Bank yes­ter­day re­port­ed net in­come for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31 of US$159.71 mil­lion, a de­cline of 42.4 per cent com­pared with the prof­it of US$277.51 the bank de­clared in its 2024 fi­nan­cial year.