Agos­ti­ni has ex­tend­ed the clos­ing date of its share swap deal to ac­quire Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd (PHL) for the sev­enth time.

Massy Hold­ings Ltd yes­ter­day an­nounced the res­ig­na­tion of Vaughn Mar­tin, its group ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and CEO of its gas prod­ucts port­fo­lio, ef­fec­tive March 31.

The calm of the Caribbean is be­ing dis­rupt­ed by a per­fect storm of glob­al volatil­i­ty, says Group CEO of Guardian Group Ian Chi­napoo while speak­ing at the in­au­gur­al Pri­vate Sec­tor Fo­rum on Tues­day, as he al­so is­sued a stark warn­ing to the re­gion’s busi­ness lead­ers: the era of in­su­lat­ed growth is over.

The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has is­sued an ur­gent call for gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion, warn­ing that chron­ic de­lays in Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) re­funds are paralysing key sec­tors of the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

De­spite on­ly 60 to 65 per cent of cred­it unions be­ing ful­ly com­pli­ant with fi­nan­cial sec­tor reg­u­la­tions, pres­i­dent of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T, Auldric Nep­tune said this was due to a lack of over­sight rather than de­fi­ance.

The Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) has re­moved its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Er­ic Grif­fith, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines has been con­firmed as a share­hold­er coun­try of CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

De­spite what Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Dr Roodal Mooni­lal de­scribed as warm dis­cus­sions with Cana­di­an petro­chem­i­cals com­pa­ny Nu­trien on Mon­day, he could not yes­ter­day pro­vide a time­line for the pos­si­ble restart of the com­pa­ny's ni­tro­gen com­plex at the Point Lisas in­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Chi­na Na­tion­al Off­shore Oil Cor­po­ra­tion (CNOOC), one of the world’s largest off­shore oil and gas pro­duc­ers, is poised to deep­en its pres­ence in T&T af­ter the Cab­i­net ap­proved the award of pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts for two off­shore blocks.

With a ro­bust lend­ing port­fo­lio of US$1.8 bil­lion, T&T has of­fi­cial­ly ce­ment­ed its po­si­tion as a cen­tral pil­lar of CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean’s re­gion­al strat­e­gy.

Last month, T&T’s cap­i­tal city, Port-of-Spain was trans­formed in­to a a dy­nam­ic hub of en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ty and artistry. There was a colour­ful dis­play of mas, mu­sic and move­ment that en­tices thou­sands to vis­it Trinidad & To­ba­go (T&T) and tens of thou­sands of lo­cals to par­tic­i­pate.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos—Con­ces­sion­al fi­nanc­ing is shrink­ing. Com­mod­i­ty volatil­i­ty is re­shap­ing rev­enue fore­casts. Ex­port di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion can no longer wait. Re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion re­mains non-ne­go­tiable.