The quar­ry­ing in­dus­try in T&T, ac­cord­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance (TTA­PA), is stand­ing at a crit­i­cal cross­roads.

Bud­gets tell us how a gov­ern­ment in­tends to spend. Gov­er­nance tells us whether that spend­ing will stand up to scruti­ny. This year’s Bud­get, with lit­tle fan­fare, in­tro­duced two new en­ti­ties, the Fi­nan­cial Over­sight and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (FOAC) and the Eco­nom­ic Re­silience Coun­cil (ERC) meant to bring dis­ci­pline and fore­sight to the front end of de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

The Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has up­dat­ed its growth pro­jec­tions for the re­gion, es­ti­mat­ing that gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) will rise 2.4 per cent this year and slight­ly re­duced to 2.3 per cent next year.

Since the end of colo­nial rule, Caribbean na­tions have fluc­tu­at­ed be­tween as­pi­ra­tions for uni­ty and the re­al­i­ties of frag­men­ta­tion. Ear­ly at­tempts to build a po­lit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­te­grat­ed re­gion were even­tu­al­ly re­placed by in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ap­proach­es, with each na­tion opt­ing to pur­sue its own path. The im­pact of this dis­uni­ty has been sig­nif­i­cant and far-reach­ing.

T&T is a ma­jor glob­al play­er in the am­mo­nia mar­ket, be­ing one of the largest ex­porters of the com­mod­i­ty world­wide. In 2024, the coun­try’s 11 fa­cil­i­ties, op­er­at­ed by four pro­duc­ers Pro­man, Nu­trien, Yara, and Pt Lisas Ni­tro­gen (PLNL) pro­duced just over four mil­lion met­ric tons of am­mo­nia. Pro­man is the largest pro­duc­er, ac­count­ing for 38 per cent of the na­tion’s out­put, fol­lowed by Nu­trien at 31 per cent, Yara at 19 per cent, and PLNL at 11%.

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai has raised con­cerns over a ris­ing tide of on­line fraud in T&T, not­ing that cit­i­zens lost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.3 mil­lion be­tween Oc­to­ber 2024 and Sep­tem­ber 2025.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance (TTA­PA) is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress long-stand­ing reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges in the coun­try’s ag­gre­gate pro­cess­ing in­dus­try, which it says has op­er­at­ed for a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry with­out a sin­gle pro­cess­ing li­cence be­ing grant­ed.

An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd has re­port­ed strong re­sults for the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, as the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­na­tion­al per­for­mance and prod­uct in­no­va­tion helped lift rev­enue and prof­its.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs warned that the Gov­ern­ment’s 2026 Bud­get rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns about fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly its plan to fi­nance near­ly $19 bil­lion in new bor­row­ing with­out clear ex­pla­na­tion.

This week, we at Bourse re­cap the per­for­mance of lo­cal stock mar­ket for the first nine-months of 2025 (9M2025). De­spite gen­er­al­ly im­prov­ing earn­ings, lo­cal eq­ui­ty mar­kets have con­tin­ued a mul­ti-year slide, damp­ened by weak­er in­vestor sen­ti­ment and oth­er dri­vers. Will the lo­cal mar­ket con­tin­ue its down­ward mo­men­tum or could new de­vel­op­ments and/or shifts in in­vestor sen­ti­ment al­ter the course in the up­com­ing months? We dis­cuss be­low.

One of T&T’s top pri­vate sec­tor ex­ec­u­tives, two econ­o­mists and and a lo­cal down­stream ex­pert have all ex­pressed con­cern about the neg­a­tive im­pact of the clo­sure of the am­mo­nia and urea op­er­a­tions on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, owned by the Cana­di­an fer­tilis­er com­pa­ny Nu­trien.

When for­mer banker Neala Per­sad, founder of Ac­cess Mo­bil­i­ty Med­care (AMMC), de­cid­ed to ex­pand her Toron­to-based com­pa­ny to Trinidad and To­ba­go, she wasn’t sim­ply launch­ing a busi­ness, she was in­tro­duc­ing a new mod­el of care.