The busi­ness of main­tain­ing a steel or­ches­tra whether it be small, medi­um, or large is not an easy task and the over­head ex­pens­es can range from $1 mil­lion to $6 mil­lion a year.

But in its 10th an­niver­sary, the band is hop­ing to ex­pand the reach of its de­sign­ers by high­light­ing the im­pact of Car­ni­val on fash­ion while al­so find­ing a new lane of sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the band.

Term Fi­nance, a dig­i­tal lender in the Caribbean, has en­tered in­to a nov­el arrange­ment with Ax­cel Fi­nance, a con­sumer cred­it provider op­er­at­ing in Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua, St. Lu­cia, and Grena­da.  

Dur­ing the 1990s in­vest­ment or unit-linked life in­sur­ance prod­ucts and an­nu­ities were sold by in­sur­ance com­pa­nies in T&T to thou­sands of pol­i­cy­hold­ers. These prod­ucts be­came the flag­ship prod­uct for a lead­ing in­sur­ance com­pa­ny. The in­vest­ment-linked in­sur­ance prod­uct was tout­ed as in­no­v­a­tive be­cause it of­fered pol­i­cy­hold­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit from in­vest­ing part of their pre­mi­um in an un­der­ly­ing fund that was backed by a pool of as­sets man­aged by pro­fes­sion­al fund man­agers. The ba­sis of this ap­proach was the “un­bundling prin­ci­ple” which al­lowed the pre­mi­um to be split in­to sep­a­rate com­po­nents name­ly a por­tion to cov­er the ex­pens­es of the pol­i­cy and an in­vest­ment por­tion. Pol­i­cy­hold­ers were led to be­lieve that peo­ple who pur­chased an in­vest­ment-linked in­sur­ance prod­uct would not on­ly be in­sured against dis­abil­i­ty, crit­i­cal ill­ness and death, but would al­so en­joy a high­er ac­cu­mu­lat­ed bal­ance than pro­vid­ed by a tra­di­tion­al in­sur­ance pol­i­cy. The prod­uct be­came very pop­u­lar be­cause of this added ben­e­fit promised by the ser­vice provider. How­ev­er, to­day it is clear that these prod­ucts have not de­liv­ered the tout­ed ben­e­fits.

Last week, a What­sApp mes­sage was sent to me out­lin­ing that a pay­ment ser­vice provider named Sure­Pay had an­nounced that it was ter­mi­nat­ing its ser­vice in Trinidad and To­ba­go ef­fec­tive March 15, 2025.

A $15 mil­lion dol­lar in­vest­ment in its yo­gurt line con­tin­ues to reap healthy re­wards for Cream­ery Nov­el­fties Ltd. So much so, that the com­pa­ny is ol­low­ing sev­er­al lu­cra­tive leads for ex­port.

The mood at Dig­i­cel T&T is tense as the Dig­i­cel Group con­firmed that jobs will be made re­dun­dant as part of a de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion plan to re­main rel­e­vant.

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) yes­ter­day re­port­ed that the rate of in­fla­tion in T&T for Jan­u­ary 2025 was 0.7 per cent.

The work­force in the en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains male dom­i­nat­ed, es­pe­cial­ly in front­line po­si­tions in ac­tiv­i­ties like op­er­a­tions, main­te­nance, drilling and con­struc­tion.

De­spite the chal­lenges that mi­grants are fac­ing in the Unit­ed States, Na­tal­ie Lam­ming, who was born in T&T and owns busi­ness­es in Brook­lyn, New York en­cour­ages T&T na­tion­als at home and those abroad to nev­er give up on their dreams of open­ing a busi­ness.

Bmo­bile has been named Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fastest and best mo­bile net­work by Ook­la® for Q3 and Q4 2024.

Ad­ven­sus, a Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic con­tact cen­tre and busi­ness process out­sourc­ing (BPO) ser­vices com­pa­ny, yes­ter­day an­nounced the launch of its US$6 mil­lion de­liv­ery fa­cil­i­ty in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas.