Ques­tions about the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print have once again been raised af­ter it was said that project is ex­pect­ed to cre­ate in ex­cess of 51,000 jobs an­nu­al­ly.

As T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as­sess­es the 2027 Bud­get, a com­mon mes­sage is emerg­ing from lead­ing pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions: the mea­sures an­nounced must ad­dress many long­stand­ing con­cerns, but their suc­cess will ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on im­ple­men­ta­tion.

The 2026 fis­cal year was an aw­ful pe­ri­od for the down­stream petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T). Con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions for new gas con­tracts led to the idling of the Nu­trien fa­cil­i­ties, which was fol­lowed by the idling of the Methanex Ti­tan fa­cil­i­ty. Re­cent­ly, Pro­man took the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to re­struc­ture its busi­ness to ad­dress the re­al­i­ty of the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply sit­u­a­tion. Over the last year, the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor shed more than 450 di­rect jobs and like­ly close to 450 in­di­rect jobs. This doesn’t in­clude any job loss from the Pro­man re­struc­tur­ing. The sit­u­a­tion al­so had a tremen­dous neg­a­tive im­pact on en­er­gy ser­vices con­trac­tors, as op­er­a­tors ad­just­ed their main­te­nance pro­grammes in re­sponse to their ex­is­ten­tial sit­u­a­tion.

Pic­ture a fam­i­ly whose mon­ey no longer stretch­es to the end of the month. Food costs more, the light bill has gone up and school ex­pens­es still have to be paid. Find­ing more mon­ey mat­ters. So does ask­ing whether mon­ey is leak­ing out, whether some­thing is sit­ting idle, or whether some­thing the fam­i­ly al­ready owns, or knows how to do, could earn more.

Work­ers strug­gling to meet the ris­ing cost of liv­ing are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to in­crease the min­i­mum wage in the na­tion­al bud­get to be pre­sent­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­mor­row, ar­gu­ing that their earn­ings are no longer enough to cov­er ba­sic house­hold ex­pens­es.

Ahead of the 2027 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, stake­hold­ers con­nect­ed to in­dus­tries that were sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed by one of the de­ci­sions made in last year’s pre­sen­ta­tion are urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to re­think its stance.

Sev­en­ty-two-year-old gar­den­er Samuel Bap­tiste starts his morn­ings be­fore sun­rise, tend­ing to a hand­ful of chive and toma­to plants in the small back­yard of his Diego Mar­tin home. The pro­duce helps stretch his month­ly bud­get, but he says it is no longer enough.

Chargé d'af­faires at the US Em­bassy in Port of Spain, Philip Kern, hopes dis­cus­sions at the Caribbean Food In­vest­ment Round­table on Thurs­day will spur for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment to help im­prove food se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion.

A re­gion­al bond tar­get­ing up to US$250 mil­lion to fi­nance cli­mate re­silience, re­new­able en­er­gy and sus­tain­able in­fra­struc­ture across the Caribbean was launched at the Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum in Bar­ba­dos, cre­at­ing a new in­vest­ment plat­form aimed at ad­dress­ing the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing gap.

Glob­alTT part­nered with Trinidad & To­ba­go Restau­rant Week (TTRW) to ex­e­cute this year’s edi­tion of TTRW, start­ing with a launch event on Sep­tem­ber 29 at Rhythms “N” Brews in Gulf City.

Em­ploy­ees at Nu­trien’s Point Lisas fa­cil­i­ty are con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion fol­low­ing the fer­tilis­er gi­ant’s de­ci­sion to in­def­i­nite­ly shut down its Trinidad op­er­a­tions, amid grow­ing con­cerns over their sev­er­ance pack­ages.

Dana-Marie Smith’s ar­ti­cle, The Pro­cure­ment Bill 2026 and the Cost of Weak­ened Ac­count­abil­i­ty, ad­dress­es the amend­ments to sup­pli­er chal­lenges, ex­emp­tions and the cor­rec­tive pow­ers of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion. An­oth­er au­di­ence must pay close at­ten­tion: the Named Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cer.