The cost of liv­ing may go up in T&T in 2026 be­cause of some of the mea­sures in­tro­duced in the bud­get which was pre­sent­ed in Oc­to­ber.

Dr Mar­garet Satya Rose’s analy­sis of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion’s re­cent com­mu­niqué cor­rect­ly high­lights the le­gal and gov­er­nance im­por­tance of ro­bust an­nu­al pro­cure­ment plan­ning.

Long-serv­ing cruise agent Charles Car­val­ho is re­ject­ing sug­ges­tions that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cruise sea­son is fac­ing any wide­spread col­lapse in book­ings, warn­ing that ex­ag­ger­at­ed com­men­tary risks dam­ag­ing the coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion in a sec­tor that de­pends heav­i­ly on con­fi­dence and glob­al per­cep­tion.

First Cit­i­zens yes­ter­day an­nounced that it has rolled out Google Pay in T&T, mak­ing this the first time the mo­bile pay­ment ser­vice is avail­able lo­cal­ly.

Well com­ple­tion is the crit­i­cal fi­nal phase of oil and gas op­er­a­tions that pre­pares a new­ly drilled well for ser­vice. It is es­sen­tial for eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty, as it en­sures the safe and ef­fi­cient con­trol and flow of hy­dro­car­bons from the reser­voir to the sur­face.

From cor­po­rate ex­ec­u­tives to Wall Street an­a­lysts to Fed­er­al Re­serve of­fi­cials, ref­er­ences to the “K-shaped econ­o­my” are rapid­ly pro­lif­er­at­ing.

Last Thurs­day, my col­umn was pub­lished un­der the head­line, “Are evil forces con­spir­ing to crash Re­pub­lic Bank?” and hope­ful­ly, most of the peo­ple who read that com­men­tary be­yond the head­line ap­pre­ci­ate that there is sig­nif­i­cant un­ease about Cor­po­ra­tion Sole nom­i­nat­ing a ma­jor­i­ty of the di­rec­tors to the board of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL).

Se­nior of­fi­cials at Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors Ltd have dis­missed re­ports that all per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees of the com­pa­ny were is­sued with fur­lough no­tices up to the end of Jan­u­ary, in­sist­ing the claim is “com­plete­ly un­true” and based on in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion.

On No­vem­ber 30 2022, a sim­ple so­cial me­dia post in­vit­ed peo­ple to in­ter­act with an AI chat­bot. It marked the day that Ope­nAI re­leased Chat­G­PT to the pub­lic. In five days, the chat­bot gained one mil­lion users and crossed 100 mil­lion with­in two months, mak­ing it the fastest adopt­ed con­sumer ap­pli­ca­tion in his­to­ry.

Through­out his­to­ry, the struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion of so­ci­eties has de­pend­ed on am­bi­tious pro­grammes of pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment. The chal­lenge is that the glob­al track record has not been good in project se­lec­tion and ex­e­cu­tion. T&T has its fair share of aban­doned or sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­layed and over­bud­get projects over the last 25 years which in­clude: the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Wa­ter­front Project, Tamana In­tec Park, Beetham Waste­water Project, Cou­va Med­ical Fa­cil­i­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty Of The West In­dies South Cam­pus (Pe­nal/Debe), Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty, Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion, Shi­va Boys’ & Par­vati Girls’ Hin­du Col­leges (Pe­nal), Ca­roni fu­el fa­cil­i­ty, Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, Red House re­fur­bish­ment, Solomon Ho­choy high­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin and the Pres­i­dent’s Cot­tage.

Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa has caused wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion across the Caribbean, with Ja­maica, Haiti and Cu­ba par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ed.

NCB Fi­nan­cial Group Ltd (NCBFG), which is chaired Ja­maica-born in­vestor, Michael Lee-Chin, is ex­pect­ed to come un­der in­creased pres­sure in 2026 due to high­er in­ter­est costs as­so­ci­at­ed with its Ju­ly 2025 US$225 mil­lion in­ter­na­tion­al bond and up­com­ing debt re­fi­nanc­ing rounds.