Cana­da’s Methanex Cor­po­ra­tion said that it will idle its Ti­tan plant on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in­def­i­nite­ly, af­ter fail­ing to se­cure a new nat­ur­al gas sup­ply con­tract with the whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

The ar­rest of Blue Wa­ters ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Do­minic Hadeed, along with his wife Genevieve and Genevieve’s rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga has trig­gered height­ened pub­lic at­ten­tion, but in­dus­try play­ers main­tain that the com­pa­ny’s day-to-day op­er­a­tions have re­mained un­af­fect­ed, with dis­tri­b­u­tion and sup­ply con­tin­u­ing un­in­ter­rupt­ed across T&T.

For­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor and fi­nance min­is­ter, Win­ston Dook­er­an, be­lieves that while on the sur­face, T&T’s macro­eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors re­main “com­fort­able”, the Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide more de­tails on how it will solve deep­er is­sues like pro­duc­tiv­i­ty chal­lenges and the ris­ing cost of liv­ing.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go-based sup­pli­er of oph­thalmic and op­ti­cal prod­ucts has since trans­formed the vis­i­bil­i­ty it gained as an es­sen­tial ser­vice in­to a grow­ing re­gion­al ex­port busi­ness, even as per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages, sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions and bank­ing con­straints con­tin­ue to test its ex­pan­sion plans.

A re­cent Unit­ed King­dom gov­ern­ment re­port de­tail­ing the ex­ten­sive foot­print of gang ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T is prompt­ing de­bate over the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al im­age, in­vestor con­fi­dence and long-term eco­nom­ic prospects, with busi­ness and econ­o­mists warn­ing that while the de­vel­op­ment is not un­prece­dent­ed, it rep­re­sents a clear rep­u­ta­tion­al chal­lenge.

There is an ur­gent need for strate­gic over­sight in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean con­cern­ing the adop­tion of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI). To ad­dress this, Pro­fes­sor Renée Cum­mings is prepar­ing GOV­ERN™, an ex­ec­u­tive blue­print for lead­ing con­fi­dent­ly, gov­ern­ing re­spon­si­bly and thriv­ing in the age of AI.

Busi­ness process out­sourc­ing com­pa­ny Bill Gosling Out­sourc­ing (BGO) has deep­ened its in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go with the open­ing of a new pur­pose-built of­fice in Trinci­ty, bring­ing 200 jobs to east Trinidad and sig­nalling plans for fur­ther ex­pan­sion.

The Cen­tral Bank of T&T has held its bench­mark re­po rate steady at 3.50 per cent, cit­ing low do­mes­tic in­fla­tion along­side mount­ing glob­al un­cer­tain­ty linked to geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and ris­ing com­mod­i­ty prices.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, does not be­lieve the State of Emer­gency (SoE) has dis­rupt­ed busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) re­quest for a record $4.12 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for fis­cal 2027 is be­ing met with a mix of con­cern, frus­tra­tion and calls for greater ac­count­abil­i­ty from stake­hold­ers, farm­ers and econ­o­mists who ar­gue that high­er fund­ing re­quests must be matched by tan­gi­ble re­sults on the ground.

For near­ly two decades, Port-of-Spain has en­dured se­vere flood­ing that halts busi­ness, par­a­lyzes trans­porta­tion, and in­flicts mil­lions in loss­es with alarm­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty. The cat­a­stroph­ic floods of No­vem­ber 2008 and No­vem­ber 2011 were clear warn­ings — yet they were some­what un­heed­ed.

When Al­li­son De­mas set up shop in the base­ment of Bea­con In­sur­ance’s of­fices on Stan­more Av­enue in 2011, she sunk most of her sav­ings in­to the ven­ture, per­suad­ed her moth­er to in­vest on “pure blind faith” and se­cured a loan from Re­pub­lic Bank. No Caribbean com­pa­ny had done what she was propos­ing, to track, elec­tron­i­cal­ly, what was run­ning on lo­cal ra­dio, tele­vi­sion and in news­pa­pers, then sell that da­ta to ad­ver­tis­ers and me­dia hous­es.