The jour­ney was nev­er fast, nev­er script­ed and nev­er guar­an­teed. For An­ge­lo Daniel Austin, who has spent just over 11 months as CEO of Xtra Foods, the climb from su­per­mar­ket floor staff to the ex­ec­u­tive suite was de­lib­er­ate­ly an­chored in ser­vice, dis­ci­pline, men­tor­ship and an un­wa­ver­ing be­lief that de­tails mat­ter.
Austin grew up in Brazil Vil­lage, one of six sib­lings in a house­hold where mon­ey was tight but val­ues were firm­ly root­ed. Those ear­ly lessons, he told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last Fri­day, shaped not on­ly his char­ac­ter but his ca­reer.
“I came from a very hum­ble home,” Austin re­called. “My par­ents taught us sim­ple things: if some­body gives you some­thing, al­ways say thank you. Al­ways say, “Have a nice day.”

The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) has for­mal­ly no­ti­fied em­ploy­ers and work­ers that Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions will rise from 13.2 per cent to 16.2 per cent, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 5, 2026, fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the 2025 Fi­nance Bill.

Fol­low­ing years of what it de­scribed as “a se­vere and es­ca­lat­ing for­eign ex­change (forex or FX) cri­sis,” the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce yes­ter­day ad­vo­cat­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ex­change rate in which the TT dol­lar is aligned to de­mand and sup­ply, which the pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion says would of­fer “a prag­mat­ic ap­proach to restor­ing bal­ance in the forex mar­ket.”

Cus­tomers af­fect­ed by pro­longed de­lays in­volv­ing Trin­ba­go Ex­press USA are set to re­ceive long-await­ed re­lief, as the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) has an­nounced that the de­liv­ery of car­go will now pro­ceed fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) yes­ter­day grant­ed a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) to EOG Re­sources for off­shore ex­plo­ration with­in the NC­MA 4(a) un­lim­it­ed block.

Massy Group has closed the fi­nan­cial year 2025 on a strong foot­ing, de­liv­er­ing growth in rev­enue, prof­it, and cash gen­er­a­tion de­spite glob­al mar­ket volatil­i­ty.

An­gos­tu­ra is en­joy­ing healthy sales this Christ­mas sea­son, thanks to strate­gic price re­duc­tions that have res­onat­ed strong­ly with con­sumers.

Some mem­bers of the pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ment are call­ing for the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC) to use its pow­ers to en­force the law against abuse of mo­nop­oly pow­er. (I ex­plained else­where that it can­not act against mo­nop­oly pow­er since that is not il­le­gal). It would be good to ex­plain what pow­ers are con­ferred on the FTC by the Fair Trad­ing Act (FTA).

Xtra Foods of­fi­cial­ly opened its sev­enth lo­ca­tion at South Park last Fri­day morn­ing, mark­ing the su­per­mar­ket chain’s first ex­pan­sion in­to south­ern Trinidad and a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in its na­tion­al growth.

The cost of liv­ing, ris­ing debt, loan re­fi­nanc­ing and mort­gage pay­ments are con­stant­ly on the mind of the av­er­age adult dai­ly.

To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor is once again nav­i­gat­ing rough seas; this time caught be­tween frag­ile air­lift, ris­ing op­er­at­ing costs and grow­ing geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty.Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA), Regi­nald Mac Lean, has al­ready sound­ed the alarm on what he de­scribed as a sharply un­der­per­form­ing win­ter sea­son, which of­fi­cial­ly be­gan on Mon­day, De­cem­ber 15.

“Workover” is a term used in the oil and gas in­dus­try to de­scribe the main­te­nance and re­pair of ex­ist­ing wells. These in­ter­ven­tions are un­der­tak­en to re­store pro­duc­tion in de­clin­ing wells or to restart those that have ceased pro­duc­ing en­tire­ly. As such, they are a vi­tal com­po­nent of the oil and gas well life­cy­cle.