In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul, said the pub­lic is re­mind­ed that the tax amnesty cov­ers penal­ties and in­ter­est about the fol­low­ing tax­es up to the year of in­come end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2023. 

On April 20, Fron­tier Air­lines will op­er­ate its last flight out of T&T. The Den­ver-based ul­tra low-cost car­ri­er will end ser­vice be­tween Trinidad and its Puer­to Ri­co hub, nine months af­ter launch­ing the route.

BpTT an­nounced yes­ter­day that it made the fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion (FID) to pro­ceed with the Gin­ger gas de­vel­op­ment, while achiev­ing ex­plo­ration suc­cess at its Frangi­pani well.  

The Caribbean tourism sec­tor is do­ing well and is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to in­crease rev­enue in 2025, but the in­dus­try is still strug­gling to find skilled work­ers.

St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ralph Gon­salves, yes­ter­day warned that the re­gion could face se­vere eco­nom­ic prob­lems if the Unit­ed States goes ahead with a pro­pos­al to im­pose a port fee of one mil­lion US dol­lars per port call on any Chi­nese-built ves­sel call­ing at US ports.

This is the first in­stall­ment of a two-part se­ries ex­am­in­ing nat­ur­al gas prices. In this seg­ment, we fo­cus on the in­ter­na­tion­al pric­ing bench­marks for nat­ur­al gas across three key mar­kets: the Nether­lands Ti­tle Trans­fer Fa­cil­i­ty (TTF), the US Hen­ry Hub and the Japan/Ko­rea Mark­er (JKM). These mar­kets play a crit­i­cal role in de­ter­min­ing nat­ur­al gas prices glob­al­ly and are par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to T&T.

Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned com­pa­ny Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) yes­ter­day de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $44.18 mil­lion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, a 24.62 per cent in­crease over the $35.45 mil­lion it record­ed in 2023.

Some busi­ness groups be­lieve that they should be in­clud­ed at the ta­ble of for­eign ex­change talks as the short­age has been af­fect­ing their mem­ber­ship for sev­er­al years.

The US Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to im­pose huge fees on Chi­nese-built or Chi­nese-flagged ves­sels dock­ing at US ports could in­crease the cost of freight to the Caribbean by be­tween 50 and 60 per cent, which could re­sult in high­er prices on im­port­ed goods of 15 to 20 per cent.

While the full de­tails of the meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and the Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Ja­maica yes­ter­day is not yet known for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, says un­cer­tain­ty still looms over this coun­try’s gas deals with Venezuela.

T&T is not the on­ly Caribbean coun­try where ob­tain­ing for­eign ex­change is a prob­lem, ac­cord­ing to ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency, Dr Damie Sinanan.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go faces on­go­ing for­eign ex­change short­ages, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­vealed that bankers have been re­cep­tive to dis­cus­sions on for­eign ex­change ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and so­lu­tions to in­creas­ing bank fees.