For all 64 years of this coun­try’s time as an In­de­pen­dent na­tion, the oil and gas sec­tor has been the back­bone of T&T’s econ­o­my.

Long be­fore Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came an in­de­pen­dent na­tion, a group of co­conut farm­ers had al­ready joined forces to build a man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness that would even­tu­al­ly grow in­to one of the coun­try’s long­stand­ing pro­duc­ers of food, per­son­al care and house­hold prod­ucts.

Ahead of the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, stake­hold­ers are call­ing for strate­gic pol­i­cy shifts and tar­get­ed fis­cal in­ter­ven­tions.

A Ja­maican en­gi­neer and in­no­va­tor liv­ing in Brazil be­lieves T&T could un­lock eco­nom­ic val­ue by ef­fec­tive­ly util­is­ing the skills of the large mi­grant pop­u­la­tion that has moved to T&T over the last decade.

In a no­tice post­ed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change and pub­lished in the me­dia, ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens said Haqq’s ap­point­ment took ef­fect on Au­gust 24, 2026.

The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) record­ed a sharp de­cline in prof­itabil­i­ty for its 2021 fi­nan­cial year, with prof­it af­ter tax falling by more than 96 per cent to $354,216.

Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny has ad­just­ed the prices of sev­er­al of its snack prod­ucts, with dis­trib­u­tors and su­per­mar­kets re­ceiv­ing a re­vised price list ear­li­er this week.

Fol­low­ing the re­lease of the Caribbean En­er­gy Price In­dex H2 2026, two cli­mate change and re­new­able en­er­gy ex­perts are sup­port­ing the call made to up­date poli­cies to in­crease re­new­able en­er­gy adop­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

State-owned Ude­cott, which is the man­ag­er of the car park in down­town Port-of-Spain, an­nounced a $50 in­crease for re­served and VIP park­ing, in a no­tice post­ed around the Parkade, as part of its changes to its park­ing arrange­ment.

For­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of cre­at­ing a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar pub­lic-sec­tor wage and back­pay bur­den through what he de­scribed as un­re­al­is­tic elec­tion promis­es, warn­ing that the fi­nan­cial pres­sure is al­ready af­fect­ing the de­liv­ery of ba­sic pub­lic ser­vices.

Six­ty-four years af­ter in­de­pen­dence, T&T stands at a crit­i­cal de­vel­op­men­tal cross­road, with its tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy-based mod­el fac­ing grow­ing pres­sure and the need for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly ur­gent.

Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ja­maica Ltd is aim­ing to com­plete its mul­ti-step ac­qui­si­tion of Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd by the fourth quar­ter of 2026, as the planned amal­ga­ma­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go in­sur­er with its ex­ist­ing sub­sidiary clears an­oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry hur­dle.