an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Even as ma­jor com­pa­nies scale back op­er­a­tions, re­struc­ture, or ex­it parts of do­mes­tic mar­ket, busi­ness­es across Trinidad and To­ba­go say they are not ready to give up on the coun­try.

The Food Dis­trib­u­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (FDA) has elect­ed its ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee for the up­com­ing term, with Jake Gillette, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of West In­di­an Traders Ltd (WITL), ap­point­ed as chair­man.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fis­cal po­si­tion strength­ened dur­ing the first sev­en months of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year, with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment record­ing a small­er over­all deficit de­spite low­er en­er­gy rev­enues, as stronger col­lec­tions from non-en­er­gy sources helped off­set the de­cline.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says its up­com­ing trade and in­vest­ment mis­sion to Cana­da will fo­cus on prepar­ing busi­ness­es to se­cure deals be­fore they board the plane.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance an­nounced yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment was suc­cess­ful in rais­ing an US$800 mil­lion sov­er­eign bond in the US mar­ket.

Shan­nice Crys­tal Brit­to be­lieves that health is wealth. So when she in­tro­duced her prod­uct, North Coast Moss to the mar­ket one year ago, it was with the in­ten­tion of giv­ing her cus­tomers a pre­mi­um, pur­pose-dri­ven seamoss brand that pro­motes a more healthy lifestyle.

The pub­lic re­buke of Massy Hold­ings by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley on Mon­day has ig­nit­ed a wider de­bate over su­per­mar­ket pric­ing, mar­ket con­cen­tra­tion and com­pe­ti­tion across the Caribbean, with the Bar­ba­dos Con­sumer Em­pow­er­ment Net­work (BCEN) warn­ing that the is­sue ex­tends well be­yond a sin­gle re­tail­er.

On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2008, then Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark raised a mo­tion on the ad­journ­ment deal­ing with the trans­fer or sale of some 450 acres (182.1 hectares) of “prime agri­cul­tur­al land” lo­cat­ed on the Or­ange Grove Es­tate to Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd, a com­pa­ny found­ed and owned by Do­minic Hadeed.

Search changed. How peo­ple shop changed. How peo­ple find busi­ness­es changed. Google held its I/O con­fer­ence in May, and Ap­ple held its World­wide De­vel­op­ers Con­fer­ence in June, both sig­nalling one of the biggest shifts the in­ter­net has seen in years, yet most busi­ness­es I work with across the re­gion are still run­ning a play­book built for the in­ter­net as it ex­ist­ed two or three years ago.

Ca­roni dairy farmer Suresh Rami­ah spent the last three years in­vest­ing his life sav­ings in­to his dairy farm, wait­ing for 23 young heifers to ma­ture and dou­ble his milk pro­duc­tion by ear­ly next year.

It is 7:15 on a week­day morn­ing. Traf­fic crawls along the East­ern Main Road as com­muters inch to­wards an­oth­er work­day. A dri­ver abrupt­ly cuts in­to the next lane with­out sig­nalling. Horns pierce the morn­ing air. A PH taxi stops un­ex­pect­ed­ly to col­lect a pas­sen­ger, bring­ing traf­fic to a stand­still. Two mo­torists ex­change an­gry words through open win­dows. Just me­tres away, plas­tic bot­tles, food con­tain­ers and oth­er dis­card­ed waste clog a road­side drain that will al­most cer­tain­ly over­flow with the next heavy down­pour.

Busi­ness con­di­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy ser­vices sec­tor re­mained mixed dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter of 2026, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est En­er­gy Ser­vices Sec­tor Sur­vey (ES­SS) con­duct­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go.