Have you ever felt that sta­tis­tics pre­sent­ed by pub­lic of­fi­cials may be out of touch with the re­al­i­ty hap­pen­ing in the econ­o­my or oth­er events in the coun­try?

There have been a few in­quiries in­to the 178-room Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in To­ba­go that is still up for sale.

A decade af­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter in 2015, T&T’s econ­o­my is 17.6 per cent small­er than it was and the coun­try is in a weak­er state.

CIBC has be­come the lat­est bank to de­crease the for­eign ex­change us­age lim­it on its deb­it card hold­ers in T&T.

The Bank­ing, In­sur­ance, and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) is re­port­ed­ly dis­ap­point­ed with the out­come of a re­cent meet­ing with the man­age­ment of su­per­mar­ket chain Tru Valu.

T&T’s Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) re­port­ed to­tal net as­set val­ue of US$6.08 bil­lion for the quar­ter end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, which is a 12.9 per cent in­crease on the US$5.39 bil­lion val­ue the coun­try’s rainy-day fund re­port­ed as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023.

The ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of T&T’s Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (TTFTC), Be­van Nar­i­nesingh, said yes­ter­day that the coun­try’s com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tor in­tends to write to reg­u­la­tor of the do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ties in­dus­try, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC), seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on its pro­pos­al to raise the fees paid by re­port­ing is­suers, bro­ker deal­ers, in­vest­ment ad­vis­ers, un­der­writ­ers and self-reg­u­la­to­ry or­gan­i­sa­tions, such as the T&T’s stock ex­change and its cen­tral de­posi­tary.

With the Car­ni­val sea­son and in­creased cruise ship ar­rivals on the hori­zon, the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce says it is crit­i­cal to ad­dress any po­ten­tial con­cerns stem­ming from the State of Emer­gency (SoE) re­gard­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of vis­i­tors.

The coun­try will have a new prime min­is­ter short­ly with Stu­art Young, cur­rent Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries as well as Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Fi­nal pro­pos­als from the three short-list­ed bid­ders in­ter­est­ed in the sale or lease of the state-owned Petrotrin re­fin­ery are ex­pect­ed to be sub­mit­ted on Jan­u­ary 27.

For­mer Massy Group gen­er­al coun­sel and ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, Angélique Parisot-Pot­ter yes­ter­day ques­tioned the more than dou­bling of the com­pa­ny's cor­po­rate ex­pens­es, its han­dling of the write off of $175 mil­lion Ni­quan-re­lat­ed re­ceiv­able and whether it was op­er­at­ing un­der an ab­sen­tee-lead­er­ship mod­el.

Nis­san’s op­er­a­tions in the Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­ket are not like­ly to be af­fect­ed in the near fu­ture, de­spite an an­nounce­ment that the Japan­ese au­tomak­er is set to merge with an­oth­er Japan­ese au­to­mo­tive gi­ant Hon­da.