If you fol­lowed the ad­vice in last month’s col­umn and be­gan doc­u­ment­ing and ob­tain­ing writ­ten au­thor­i­ty for ques­tion­able di­rec­tives, you may have al­ready no­ticed the tem­per­a­ture change.

Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has chal­lenged Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over claims that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion de­liv­ered Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­moval from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s list of non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions, ar­gu­ing that the record does not sup­port that nar­ra­tive.

Methanol pro­duc­tion re­mains a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of T&T’s down­stream en­er­gy sec­tor, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to man­u­fac­tur­ing out­put, for­eign ex­change earn­ings, and em­ploy­ment. Lever­ag­ing its nat­ur­al gas re­sources, the coun­try has es­tab­lished it­self as one of the world’s lead­ing ex­porters of methanol, with pro­duc­tion large­ly ori­ent­ed to­ward in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. As a val­ue-added, gas-based in­dus­try, methanol plays an im­por­tant role in sup­port­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ty be­yond the ex­trac­tive in­dus­try.

First Cit­i­zens’ de­ci­sion to cut US-dol­lar cred­it card lim­its will hurt SMEs im­me­di­ate­ly and hard, an­a­lysts and SME busi­ness­es said Fri­day, as they com­ment­ed on the most re­cent low­er­ing of US-dol­lar spend­ing lim­its by a lo­cal com­mer­cial bank.

The nat­ur­al gas down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go(T&T) once hailed as a mod­el to em­u­late for coun­tries ea­ger to de­vel­op their nat­ur­al gas re­sources has now found it­self in a sur­vival mode. The sec­tor is deal­ing with a con­flu­ence of chal­lenges:

Tonight is Di­manche Gras, the pre­cur­sor to the cul­mi­na­tion of the Car­ni­val sea­son with Pa­rade of the Bands.

As T&T’s Car­ni­val sea­son reach­es its peak once again, the na­tion is cel­e­brat­ing an­oth­er year of events, in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors and the fa­mil­iar rush of fetes stretch­ing from dusk to dawn.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day wel­comed the de­ci­sion by the US Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) to is­sue gen­er­al li­cences 49 and 50 to BP and Shell, among oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies, to ne­go­ti­ate and en­ter in­to con­tracts to de­vel­op gas fields in Venezuela.

The ac­qui­si­tion of Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica) by Agos­ti­ni Ltd, which is list­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change, took a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward yes­ter­day, af­ter the com­pa­ny an­nounced it had re­ceived a state­ment of non-ob­jec­tion from the Fair Trade Com­mis­sion of Ja­maica for the deal.

In the wake of news that the US De­part­ment of Trea­sury is­sued OFAC gen­er­al li­cences to BP and Shell, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has raised ques­tions con­cern­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezuela.

First Cit­i­zens has be­come the lat­est bank to an­nounce a re­duc­tion of for­eign ex­change lim­it on cred­it cards.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has launched a scathing cri­tique on the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of pre­sid­ing over an eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion.