Trinidad and To­ba­go's diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ship with Pana­ma was cel­e­brat­edear­li­er this month at Queen’s Hall, Port of Spain.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Kennedy Swarats­ingh host­ed an in­tro­duc­to­ry vis­it with re­cent­ly in­stalled In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund mis­sion chief to T&T, Mag­nus Sax­e­gaard on Thurs­day to dis­cuss T&T’s eco­nom­ic re­silience.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion (IFC), a mem­ber of the World Bank Group, last week dis­closed it will in­vest up to US$15 mil­lion in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Re­silience Fund (CCRF) Debt sub fund.

Glob­al leader in dig­i­tal pay­ments, Visa has an­nounced a ma­jor lead­er­ship shift in its Caribbean op­er­a­tions, nam­ing Jorge Salum as vice-pres­i­dent and coun­try man­ag­er for Greater Caribbean Mar­kets, a new­ly-cre­at­ed role aimed at strength­en­ing the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al foot­print as dig­i­tal pay­ments ac­cel­er­ate.

Piz­za Hut, the 68-year-old chain that has long strug­gled with grow­ing com­pe­ti­tion and out­dat­ed restau­rants, will be sold for US$2.7 bil­lion by par­ent com­pa­ny Yum Brands.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine is warn­ing that T&T’s rev­enues may de­crease in the com­ing months as en­er­gy prices are on the de­cline due to eas­ing ten­sions in the Mid­dle East.

The en­er­gy sec­tor may be cen­tral to T&T’s econ­o­my, but ac­cord­ing to Fitzroy Hare­wood, the pres­i­dent of Point Lisas Ni­tro­gen Lim­it­ed (PLNL), it is still un­der ap­pre­ci­at­ed and mis­un­der­stood.

Dur­ing Colm Im­bert’s nine years and six months as T&T min­is­ter of fi­nance—he served in that po­si­tion from Sep­tem­ber 2015 to March 2025—few of his col­leagues in the then Op­po­si­tion chal­lenged his pre­sen­ta­tion of da­ta and sta­tis­tics, ei­ther dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions or dur­ing de­bates in Par­lia­ment.

Be­fore we cel­e­brate a gas re­vival, T&T must ask who owns the gas, who sells the LNG, who cap­tures the up­side—and what re­mains for the coun­try.

The IMF’s 2026 Ar­ti­cle IV re­port presents Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor as one of the main fac­tors shap­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic out­look. While the wider econ­o­my con­tin­ues to re­cov­er, the re­port makes clear that weak pro­duc­tion from ma­ture oil and nat­ur­al gas fields is still weigh­ing on growth.

T&T busi­ness­es say they are be­ing squeezed on all fronts—soar­ing crime-re­lat­ed costs, a stub­born for­eign ex­change crunch and ris­ing eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty.

In­flu­encers have be­come a huge part of brand mar­ket­ing, with their ser­vices cost­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in the Caribbean. And Dar­ren Hosang-Rud­der and his team at Restayge be­lieve the use of in­flu­encers as a mar­ket­ing tool is on­ly go­ing to in­crease.