An­tho­ny Smart has been re-elect­ed as chair­man of the First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (FCGFH) board.

Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd (PPG­PL) end­ed 2024 with a strong fi­nan­cial per­for­mance of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 136 per cent growth in prof­it af­ter tax from 2023.  

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has said this coun­try is ex­pect­ed to rake in bil­lions in for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) in the en­er­gy sec­tor in the next three years.

Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL) record­ed prof­it at­trib­ut­able to its share­hold­ers of $850.14 mil­lion in its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, an in­crease of 31.77 per cent com­pared to the $645.43 mil­lion the group earned in 2023.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Son­ji Pierre-Chase gave her in­au­gur­al speech at the cham­ber’s an­nu­al busi­ness meet­ing and cock­tail re­cep­tion held on April 2 at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

With the US gov­ern­ment re­vok­ing the li­cences for the Drag­on gas project, de­vel­op­men­tal econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs is strong­ly ad­vis­ing that rather than sim­ply mourn the loss of the ini­tia­tive, T&T must use this mo­ment to re­think its eco­nom­ic fu­ture.

This was the mes­sage from for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Roger Roach to busi­ness­es, who are cry­ing out for for­eign ex­change.

In an era where con­sumers are more in­formed and con­nect­ed than ever be­fore, the abil­i­ty of busi­ness­es to lis­ten to their cus­tomers has be­come a defin­ing fac­tor in their suc­cess. Mar­ket­ing is no longer a one-way street where brands dic­tate the con­ver­sa­tion; in­stead, it is a dy­nam­ic di­a­logue dri­ven by con­sumer needs, pref­er­ences, and ex­pec­ta­tions.

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, an econ­o­mist and an en­er­gy ex­pert call for ur­gent re­fo­cus on the econ­o­my, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the re­vo­ca­tion of the OFAC (Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol) spe­cial li­cences for the Drag­on and Cocuina fields be­ing re­voked by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment.  

NCB Fi­nan­cial Group Ltd (NCBFG) failed to de­clare a div­i­dend for its first quar­ter that end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, de­spite in­di­cat­ing that it would hold a spe­cial board meet­ing dur­ing its sec­ond quar­ter, which end­ed on March 31, 2025, to con­sid­er the div­i­dend pay­ment.

It has now been more than five years since cannabis was de­crim­i­nalised in Trinidad and To­ba­go on De­cem­ber 23, 2019. Dur­ing that time, the de­vel­op­ment of the for­mal med­i­c­i­nal cannabis sec­tor, to be over­seen by the long-pend­ing T&T Cannabis Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty, stag­nat­ed be­fore it ever tru­ly be­gan. De­spite the pas­sage of the Cannabis Con­trol Bill 2020 in April 2022, the leg­is­la­tion which em­pow­ers the Au­thor­i­ty, that body is yet to be es­tab­lished.

At a news con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the de­ci­sion of the US De­part­ment of Trea­sury to re­voke T&T’s spe­cif­ic li­cences to un­der­take the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on and Cocuina-Man­akin gas fields “does not come nec­es­sar­i­ly as a sur­prise, see­ing how volatile things are, not on­ly with re­spect to the pol­i­cy with Venezuela, but what we are see­ing with the ap­pli­ca­tion of tar­iffs.”