While the Cen­tral Bank cur­rent­ly holds around US$163 mil­lion in gold re­serves as at the end of De­cem­ber 2024, with mount­ing eco­nom­ic and geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ties, T&T’s banker to the Gov­ern­ment and reg­u­la­tor of fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions ought to se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er ex­pand­ing these hold­ings, giv­en gold’s ef­fec­tive­ness as a hedge against eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty, econ­o­mist Dr Valmik­ki Ar­joon told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

Lo­cal, pub­licly list­ed, mul­ti­line group, Agos­ti­ni, is hop­ing that its re­brand can help grow re­gion­al busi­ness and by proxy help the growth of Caribbean brands.

Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Court Heather Seale is ad­vis­ing the coun­try’s em­ploy­ers and busi­ness lead­ers to un­der­stand the In­dus­tri­al Court’s pow­ers and pro­ce­dures so they can suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate their mat­ters there.

For­mer cen­tral banker Mark Car­ney is Cana­da’s new prime min­is­ter af­ter be­ing sworn on Fri­day fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Justin Trudeau, who an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion in Jan­u­ary but re­mained prime min­is­ter un­til his suc­ces­sor was sworn in. Car­ney won last week­end’s con­test for the prime min­is­ter­ship by a land­slide, win­ning 85.9 per cent of the vote.

Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny (SFC) yes­ter­day an­nounced that it was in­creas­ing its quar­ter­ly div­i­dend by 12.5 per cent from US$0.06 a share to US$.0.0675 (US$0.27 an­nu­alised div­i­dend).

In his ex­it in­ter­view on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as­sured that this coun­try’s econ­o­my is on sol­id foot­ing. 

The lat­est round of sanc­tions will cost Venezuela bil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue and could re­sult in a new flow of il­le­gal mi­grants, which could cause se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic and so­cial prob­lems in T&T and oth­er neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

As the world cel­e­brates In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the strides made to­ward gen­der equal­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in tra­di­tion­al­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­tries like the ex­trac­tive sec­tor. In 2023, the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI) strength­ened its com­mit­ment to gen­der in­clu­sion by in­tro­duc­ing ad­di­tion­al gen­der-spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sions in­to the EITI Stan­dard.

In last week’s com­men­tary in this space, which was head­lined, “Should Govt sell its TSTT shares now?” the pub­lic was re­mind­ed of an an­nounce­ment made by in­com­ing prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young that the Cab­i­net, in March 2022, took a de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish a sub-com­mit­tee that was man­dat­ed to look at TSTT’s cur­rent po­si­tion, whether the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider was fit for pur­pose in the ever-chang­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try and to make rec­om­men­da­tions on what should be done with TSTT.

Nine years ago, IDB In­vest was “recre­at­ed” with the in­tent to place more fo­cus on the Caribbean.

For the past decade, de­clin­ing oil and gas pro­duc­tion has been a key eco­nom­ic chal­lenge for T&T. Re­vers­ing this trend re­quires in­creased up­stream in­vest­ment, which is cur­rent­ly un­der­way. Sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments are be­ing made in the up­stream oil and gas sec­tor, as well as in re­new­able en­er­gy.

The first six months of the T&T Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency Ltd (TT­TI­PA) are not go­ing as smooth­ly as the Gov­ern­ment would have hoped, as sev­er­al work­ers are ag­griev­ed at the fi­nan­cial terms of their tran­si­tion to the new agency.