The Caribbean faces a widen­ing dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture and in­vest­ment gap that could un­der­mine its abil­i­ty to com­pete in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), fin­tech, dig­i­tal gov­ern­ment and oth­er emerg­ing sec­tors, CAN­TO C9 Chair Lisa Agard has warned.

As forex lim­i­ta­tions con­tin­ue to plague on­line shop­pers, one en­tre­pre­neur whose prod­ucts and ser­vices is mak­ing a glob­al reach, is giv­ing her T&T cus­tomers the op­tion of pay­ing for their pur­chas­es from her web­site in lo­cal cur­ren­cy.

In the last week, T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor has ex­pe­ri­enced ex­tra­or­di­nary, mo­men­tous de­vel­op­ments, with BP an­nounc­ing an agree­ment to ac­quire Wood­side En­er­gy’s 70 per cent stake in the Ca­lyp­so gas project last Thurs­day, Au­gust 6, which takes the Lon­don-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ing in the gas field, which is north east of To­ba­go, to 100 per cent.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young says the re­cent de­cline in prof­its of state-con­trolled com­pa­nies may be a symp­tom of gov­ern­ment poli­cies.

Last Thurs­day, BP an­nounced that it had agreed to ac­quire Wood­side En­er­gy’s 70 per cent in­ter­est in Block TTDAA 14. Once com­plet­ed, the trans­ac­tion will take BP’s own­er­ship of the Ca­lyp­so gas project to 100 per cent and give it op­er­a­tor­ship of one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s largest un­de­vel­oped nat­ur­al gas re­sources. This is an ex­treme­ly pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment.

Ar­gen­tine econ­o­mist Dr Daniel Per­rot­ti be­lieves that giv­en T&T’s large en­er­gy re­sources it can lead the re­gion in deep­en­ing trade among mem­ber states and al­so lead the way in­to new mar­kets in Latin Amer­i­ca.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T has wel­comed BP’s de­ci­sion to as­sign a 20 per cent stake in the Man­akin block to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), de­scrib­ing the move as an im­por­tant step for­ward for the de­vel­op­ment of the cross-bor­der Cocuina-Man­akin gas field and for this coun­try’s long-term en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd has re­port­ed low­er rev­enue and prof­its for the first six months of 2026 as high­er lo­cal ex­cise du­ties and chal­leng­ing con­di­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets weighed on per­for­mance, de­spite strong growth in its do­mes­tic busi­ness and con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion of its pre­mi­um brands.

Busi­ness lead­ers in cen­tral and south Trinidad yes­ter­day were unan­i­mous in their views that the re­fur­bish­ment and re­fash­ion­ing of the steel plant on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate would be a sig­nif­i­cant boost to the econ­o­my of the re­gion, by gen­er­at­ing new jobs and for­eign ex­change.

In the ma­trix of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, a coun­try’s eco­nom­ic health is in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to its po­lit­i­cal cli­mate. For a twin-is­land re­pub­lic like Trinidad and To­ba­go, nav­i­gat­ing a com­plex glob­al econ­o­my and striv­ing to di­ver­si­fy its ser­vices sec­tor, po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty is not a lux­u­ry—it is an eco­nom­ic ne­ces­si­ty. Over the re­cent past, our na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment has ex­pe­ri­enced tur­bu­lent pe­ri­ods.

Massy Hold­ings Ltd yes­ter­day de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it at­trib­ut­able t0 the own­ers of the par­ent of $322.26 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2026, a 35.6 per cent de­cline com­pared to the $500.47 mil­lion the group earned for the pri­or pe­ri­od.

Caribbean busi­ness­es must stop con­fus­ing the adop­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and fo­cus in­stead on whether tech­nol­o­gy is solv­ing re­al prob­lems, im­prov­ing lives and strength­en­ing eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness.