The First Cit­i­zens Group yes­ter­day clar­i­fied the dif­fer­ence be­tween First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings (FCH) and First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings (FCGFH), main­tain­ing that FCH is a pri­vate com­pa­ny ful­ly owned by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (Cor­po­ra­tion Sole), which holds the State’s 60.11 per cent share­hold­ing in FCGFH, the pub­licly list­ed com­pa­ny on the T&T Stock Ex­change.

Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Roger Ho­sein is con­vinced that the new book which he coau­thored of­fers so­lu­tions for some of the press­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges that T&T faces at the mo­ment.

The dig­i­tal econ­o­my has re­shaped the way busi­ness­es com­mu­ni­cate with con­sumers. From so­cial me­dia cam­paigns to tar­get­ed ad­ver­tis­ing, the col­lec­tion and use of con­sumer da­ta has be­come the back­bone of mod­ern mar­ket­ing. Yet, this re­liance on da­ta is be­ing chal­lenged glob­al­ly as pri­va­cy con­cerns in­ten­si­fy and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works tight­en. For T&T, where busi­ness­es are in­creas­ing­ly lean­ing on dig­i­tal strate­gies to reach au­di­ences at home and abroad, the con­ver­sa­tion about da­ta pri­va­cy is no longer op­tion­al. It is a defin­ing fac­tor that will shape the fu­ture of mar­ket­ing, trust and com­pet­i­tive­ness in the lo­cal econ­o­my.

Last week, two mem­bers of the Cab­i­net of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar—Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Kennedy Swarats­ingh and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie—ac­tive­ly at­tempt­ed to force the First Cit­i­zens group CEO, Karen Dar­basie, to re­sign.

There are winds of change sweep­ing across the Caribbean, and they’re not me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal. My re­cent va­ca­tion in Ja­maica deep­ened my con­cerns about sev­er­al press­ing re­gion­al is­sues:

In T&T’s on­go­ing de­bate over for­eign ex­change ac­cess, two com­pet­ing frame­works have emerged: Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s five-point plan, aimed at re­form­ing and stream­lin­ing forex dis­tri­b­u­tion, and the Cen­tral Bank’s decades-old ho­n­our sys­tem, which re­lies on com­mer­cial banks to al­lo­cate for­eign cur­ren­cy with fair­ness and dis­cre­tion.

As the world cel­e­brates the un­prece­dent­ed pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains of fron­tier tech­nolo­gies such as ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ro­bot­ics, the ques­tion for T&T is stark: are we tru­ly po­si­tioned to har­ness the wealth and op­por­tu­ni­ties these trans­for­ma­tive tech­nolo­gies cre­ate? The un­com­fort­able an­swer is, “not re­al­ly.”

In a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle, the En­er­gy Cham­ber ex­am­ined em­ploy­ment da­ta trends with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor. This high­light­ed that, de­spite its crit­i­cal role in dri­ving eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, the sec­tor em­ploys on­ly about 2 per cent of the work­force.

Some in­sur­ance com­pa­nies in T&T of­fer their clients “in­ter­est-free loans” against life in­sur­ance poli­cies that ac­cu­mu­late cash val­ue. The pol­i­cy­hold­er is af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bor­row against the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed val­ue of the pol­i­cy at ze­ro in­ter­est. By of­fer­ing such loans, the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny pre­sum­ably can at­tract a high­er de­mand for its in­sur­ance prod­ucts. Sounds like a win-win for both the pol­i­cy­hold­er and the com­pa­ny. The re­al­i­ty is very dif­fer­ent. In­ter­est-free pol­i­cy loans are not free! There are hid­den costs that have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the fi­nan­cial well­be­ing of the pol­i­cy­hold­er. It is im­por­tant for pol­i­cy­hold­ers to re­mem­ber that “THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH”!! This max­im sim­ply means that there is a cost to every­thing!!

As T&T deep­ens its en­gage­ment in cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bon de­vel­op­ment, re­cent geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela cast a long shad­ow over projects cen­tral to T&T’s en­er­gy fu­ture.

Months af­ter an­nounc­ing plans to re-en­gage with Grena­da con­cern­ing the pos­si­ble ex­plo­ration of oil and gas there, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal met with the Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da Dick­on Mitchell con­cern­ing the mat­ter.

For over a cen­tu­ry, T&T has been in the oil busi­ness and for all 63 years of its in­de­pen­dence, the na­tion has leaned heav­i­ly on this re­source.