Pres­i­dent of Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana, Al­is­tair Rout­ledge says the coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas will most like­ly not be con­vert­ed to Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) for ex­port but would be used to fu­el the coun­try’s sev­er­al oth­er growth ar­eas, even as Exxon­Mo­bil pre­pares to even­tu­al­ly de­vel­op its first non-as­so­ci­at­ed gas field here.

The 2026 Na­tion­al Bud­get, pre­sent­ed against the back­drop of a pro­ject­ed $3.65 bil­lion fis­cal deficit and mount­ing de­mand for so­cial ser­vices, in­tro­duced a mix of new tax­es, struc­tur­al re­forms, and tar­get­ted in­vest­ments in key sec­tors such as agri­cul­ture, hous­ing and tourism. 

That was the mes­sage from EY ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Wade George dur­ing the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) post-bud­get fo­rum at the Hy­att Re­gency on Tues­day.

The T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) says the 2025-2026 na­tion­al bud­get was ex­cel­lent.

Busi­ness lead­ers in south Trinidad are de­scrib­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s pre­sen­ta­tion for fis­cal year 2026 as a “good bud­get.”

As I ar­gued last week, as Par­lia­ment de­bates Bud­get 2026, the ques­tion is not whether the num­bers add up, but whether the rules that dri­ve them make sense. Our fis­cal ar­chi­tec­ture still re­wards spend­ing, not sav­ing.

The en­er­gy sec­tor is the ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the gov­ern­ment’s tax­a­tion rev­enue stream.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is warn­ing that cit­i­zens should brace for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­creased bank charges fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment a 0.25 per cent as­set levy on com­mer­cial banks and in­sur­ance com­pa­nies.

Change has al­ways been part of busi­ness life, but to­day it feels dif­fer­ent. The speed, fre­quen­cy and scale of dis­rup­tion now de­fine the land­scape in which every T&T en­ter­prise must op­er­ate. Tech­nol­o­gy ad­vances, shift­ing con­sumer ex­pec­ta­tions and the de­mands of a com­pet­i­tive glob­al econ­o­my are forc­ing com­pa­nies to re­think how they work, what they of­fer and how they en­gage cus­tomers.

On Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 13, 2025, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo pre­sent­ed the first bud­get of the ad­min­is­tra­tion that was elect­ed on April 28, 2025, for a five-year term of of­fice. Mr Tan­coo’s bud­get was ti­tled T&T first: Build­ing eco­nom­ic fair­ness through ac­count­able fis­cal poli­cies.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the coun­try’s for­eign ex­change chal­lenges are so se­vere that even he could on­ly ac­cess US$200 dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to his bank.

A high court judge has grant­ed an in­junc­tion re­strain­ing the liq­uida­tor of CL Fi­nan­cial from com­plet­ing the sale of Trinci­ty Com­mer­cial Cen­tre, which in­cludes the Trinci­ty Mall, un­til Oc­to­ber 27.