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.

Sagi­cor Group Ja­maica yes­ter­day an­nounced the pub­li­ca­tion of its Com­bined Scheme and Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gen­er­al Meet­ing Book­let, along with re­lat­ed share­hold­er doc­u­ments, mark­ing an im­por­tant mile­stone in the pro­posed cre­ation of a more in­te­grat­ed Caribbean or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Every year, over the last four years, Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture has ex­ceed­ed rev­enue by sev­er­al bil­lion dol­lars. The forth­com­ing bud­get 2027 is not ex­pect­ed to be any dif­fer­ent. At a time when the coun­try con­tin­ues to face sig­nif­i­cant fis­cal con­straints, the man­ner in which pub­lic mon­ey is spent as­sumes even greater sig­nif­i­cance.

Econ­o­mists are urg­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers to treat the World Bank’s lat­est eco­nom­ic fore­cast as a warn­ing ahead of the na­tion­al bud­get, af­ter the in­ter­na­tion­al lender pro­ject­ed that T&T’s econ­o­my will con­tract for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year be­fore stag­ing a re­cov­ery in 2027.

I don't re­mem­ber the first time I felt it, but the feel­ing has fol­lowed me all my life: the al­most hyp­not­ic pull of watch­ing peo­ple play in a steel­band. Stand in any pa­n­yard and you will see it. The wild fa­cial ex­pres­sions, the bod­ies mov­ing with the rhythm, the in­tense con­cen­tra­tion that sud­den­ly breaks in­to a smile. The play­ers are not just mak­ing mu­sic; they are com­plete­ly im­mersed in it. There is some­thing in­her­ent­ly joy­ful about play­ing the steel­pan.

Every sea­son, fash­ion de­sign­ers launch col­lec­tions filled with cre­ativ­i­ty, crafts­man­ship, and vi­sion. The sil­hou­ettes are strong, the fab­rics are thought­ful, and the sto­ry­telling is com­pelling. Yet when it comes to sell­ing to buy­ers, the mo­men­tum stalls.

On Mon­day, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will present the 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get. There will be the usu­al fo­cus on the mea­sures an­nounced, the tax­es ad­just­ed, the in­cen­tives of­fered, the pro­grammes fund­ed and the projects promised. In our en­thu­si­asm to get to these mat­ters, we of­ten for­get to an­a­lyze the econ­o­my that the min­is­ter is ac­tu­al­ly bud­get­ing for.

One of the most im­por­tant—and po­ten­tial­ly most re­veal­ing—as­pects of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s Mon­day Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is what he says about the en­er­gy wind­fall that land­ed in the Gov­ern­ment’s lap in the third quar­ter of cal­en­dar 2026.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGL) pro­duc­tion in­creased for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year in 2025, ex­tend­ing a re­cov­ery from the low­est lev­el record­ed in the En­er­gy In­sti­tute’s 2015–2025 se­ries.

The Caribbean Mu­sic Awards (CMA) on Sep­tem­ber 19 was a mem­o­rable oc­ca­sion for re­gion­al artistes, but it held a spe­cial mean­ing for de­sign­er Kambe Lovelace. The young de­sign­er got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to style singer and song­writer Shereese “Mela Caribe” Ed­mund, and to see two of his KAMBE The Brand pieces in the spot­light—on the red car­pet and at the af­ter par­ty.

De­spite chal­lenges across busi­ness seg­ments, Courts is bet­ting on the re­silience it has seen in the Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­ket since it opened in this coun­try 35 years ago as a fur­ni­ture, home ap­pli­ance and elec­tri­cal store.

T&T en­ters the fi­nal week be­fore the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2027 na­tion­al bud­get, fac­ing mount­ing eco­nom­ic pres­sures, with econ­o­mists warn­ing that slow­ing growth, ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages and an econ­o­my still de­pen­dent on de­clin­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion are pos­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges to the coun­try’s long-term prospects.