Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon is en­cour­ag­ing more en­tre­pre­neurs to take part in the $500 mil­lion long-term loan guar­an­tee scheme for SMEs in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor which was im­ple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in the 2023 bud­get.

The loans will be for a pe­ri­od of four years, with two years grace pe­ri­od for quar­ter­ly cap­i­tal re­pay­ments.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says a bal­ance must be found be­tween T&T as a hy­dro­car­bon-based econ­o­my and the right blend of re­new­able en­er­gy dri­ven by clean­er tech­nol­o­gy which would fetch green com­mod­i­ty prices on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

In­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man Rights Day is now just two days away.
Hu­man Rights Day is ob­served every year on De­cem­ber 10— the day the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly adopt­ed, in 1948, the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights (UDHR).

Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­ceived its third award this year for Best Bank/Bank of the Year. The most re­cent win—The Bank of the Year 2022 from The Banker Mag­a­zine, a Fi­nan­cial Times pub­li­ca­tion—was an­nounced a few days ago.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T has “warm­ly wel­comed” yes­ter­day’s sign­ing of agree­ments be­tween bpTT, Shell, The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T Ltd (the At­lantic share­hold­ers) and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T for the re­struc­tur­ing of the At­lantic LNG fa­cil­i­ty.

Some of the ma­jor bar­ri­ers that make ex­port­ing a chal­lenge in­clude dif­fi­cul­ty in ac­cess­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets; fierce for­eign com­pe­ti­tion; lack of ac­cess to mar­ket in­tel­li­gence and re­search; reg­u­la­to­ry com­plex­i­ty; lack of knowl­edge of free/for­eign trade agree­ments; lack of ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing, and dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing trad­ing part­ners.

This coun­try’s ma­jor en­er­gy play­ers have agreed that the sim­pli­fied At­lantic LNG com­mer­cial struc­ture will en­able the free­ing-up of re­sources, to fo­cus on in­creas­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

In a press re­lease the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance alert­ed the pub­lic that to­tal rev­enue rev­enues for T&T for the fis­cal year 2021 to 2022 stood at $54.21 bil­lion up from $43.33 bil­lion.

With the glob­al uptick in cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty at­tacks and tech­nol­o­gy breach­es, Su­per­no­va Tech­nolo­gies Ltd is pre­pared to ush­er in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and change cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty im­ple­men­ta­tion across the re­gion.

This from Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire who shared some in­sights ex­clu­sive­ly with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian dur­ing the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T’s (BATT) 25th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion which was held at the Hilton Ho­tel re­cent­ly.

Trade be­tween T&T and the UK con­tin­ues to flour­ish as to­tal trade in goods and ser­vices (ex­ports plus im­ports) was £691 mil­lion in the four quar­ters to the end of Q2 2022, an in­crease of 65.3 per cent or £273 mil­lion from the four quar­ters to the end of Q2 2021.