Busi­ness own­ers across Ch­agua­nas are paint­ing a stark pic­ture of an econ­o­my un­der pres­sure, with many re­port­ing falling sales, ris­ing op­er­at­ing costs and con­sumers cut­ting back on spend­ing as they strug­gle to cope with the high­er cost of liv­ing.

Shel­ley Sylvester has been ap­point­ed Group Chief Fi­nan­cial Of­fi­cer (CFO) of AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH).

Three ma­jor T&T-list­ed com­pa­nies have an­nounced changes to their boards and se­nior man­age­ment, sig­nalling a pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion across the bank­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­sumer goods sec­tors.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shell said yes­ter­day that re­cent se­nior va­can­cies that have been pub­licly ad­ver­tised are not con­nect­ed to the Man­a­tee project.