For­eign ex­change short­ages, ris­ing cy­ber fraud, and the re­al­i­ty that thou­sands re­main out­side the for­mal bank­ing sys­tem are now at the cen­tre of the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT) agen­da, as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Ke­ston How­ell sig­nals a more ag­gres­sive push to re­shape how the sec­tor en­gages the pub­lic.

In the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) had re­port­ed unau­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $3.285 bil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025, which she said was dou­ble the com­pa­ny’s prof­it in 2024 and the high­est prof­it in 11 years.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has warned that de­ci­sions sur­round­ing gas al­lo­ca­tion, state en­er­gy rev­enues, and cross-bor­der ne­go­ti­a­tions are plac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­dus­tri­al base and long-term en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty at risk, while cau­tion­ing that mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) board could face per­son­al le­gal con­se­quences.

The Caribbean could face a sharp in­crease in food prices with­in the next three months, with the im­pact like­ly to reach the re­gion soon­er than ex­pect­ed, ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Wayne Gan­pat.

T&T is emerg­ing as a crit­i­cal hub in Philip Mor­ris In­ter­na­tion­al’s (PMI) shift to­wards smoke-free prod­ucts, po­si­tion­ing the coun­try at the cen­tre of a re­gion­al tran­si­tion that could re­shape dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works, in­vest­ment flows, and reg­u­la­to­ry pri­or­i­ties across the Caribbean.

The most use­ful thing about gas trans­mis­sion in­ci­dent da­ta is not sim­ply whether the to­tal num­ber of in­ci­dents is ris­ing or falling; it is what the da­ta re­veals about the caus­es of those in­ci­dents. The US De­part­ment of Trans­porta­tion Pipeline and Haz­ardous Ma­te­ri­als Safe­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion (PHM­SA) chart on on­shore gas trans­mis­sion pipeline sig­nif­i­cant in­ci­dents shows that the largest con­tri­bu­tion in 2010–2019 came from equip­ment fail­ure, with small­er but no­table con­tri­bu­tions from ma­te­r­i­al fail­ure of pipe or wells, oth­er out­side-force dam­age, nat­ur­al-force dam­age, in­cor­rect op­er­a­tion, and ex­ca­va­tion dam­age.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says glob­al in­sta­bil­i­ty, in­clud­ing con­flict in the Mid­dle East, is ac­cel­er­at­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery rather than de­rail­ing it, as the Gov­ern­ment push­es ahead with an en­er­gy-led growth strat­e­gy and wider eco­nom­ic re­forms.

From In­sta­gram reels to YouTube videos to pod­casts, more cre­ators and busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go are step­ping in­to the dig­i­tal space—build­ing au­di­ences, telling sto­ries and cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties on­line.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go’s welders face shrink­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in the do­mes­tic en­er­gy sec­tor, a grow­ing pool of high­ly trained welders is be­ing tapped for one of Eu­rope’s most am­bi­tious in­fra­struc­ture builds - the Unit­ed King­dom’s £37 bil­lion nu­clear pow­er pro­gramme.

When many peo­ple hear the word ex­port, they still think first of goods. They think of prod­ucts be­ing man­u­fac­tured, pack­aged, shipped and sold over­seas. That re­mains an im­por­tant part of trade, but it is no longer the whole sto­ry.

Over the past two months, T&T has made sig­nif­i­cant strides in achiev­ing com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards re­gard­ing an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing (AML) prac­tices.

The year is 2026, but the en­er­gy shock of 2014 still haunts in­vestors in T&T in ways that many do not ful­ly un­der­stand or ap­pre­ci­ate.