The T&T econ­o­my is fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant down­side risk fu­elled by a like­ly slow­down in glob­al growth, con­tin­ued low en­er­gy pro­duc­tion, an in­abil­i­ty to ful­ly re­open the econ­o­my and the con­tin­u­ing pan­dem­ic.

“By its na­ture, the Car­ni­val sea­son gen­er­ates sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty across sev­er­al sec­tors in­clud­ing, en­ter­tain­ment, se­cu­ri­ty, me­dia, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and re­tail, nor­mal­ly pro­vid­ing a boost for the do­mes­tic econ­o­my over a pe­ri­od of at least six weeks,” econ­o­mist and man­ag­er at Re­pub­lic Bank Garvin Joe­field stat­ed in his col­umn, The Ta­ban­ca is Re­al- A look at how a Car­ni­val free year dis­rupt­ed the econ­o­my.

T&T and, by ex­ten­sion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is re­ceiv­ing an am­mo­nia wind­fall as the coun­try ben­e­fits from sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er earn­ings from the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor with am­mo­nia prices reach­ing near record lev­els.

New­ly-ap­point­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Ian De Souza says one of his main fo­cus will be to deep­en col­lab­o­ra­tion with Gov­ern­ment and labour to en­sure is­sues af­fect­ing the busi­ness sec­tor are un­der­stood and solved to ad­dress the con­cerns of var­i­ous in­ter­ests.

Dutch Air­line KLM has de­cid­ed to ex­tend its ser­vice be­tween Hol­land and Port of Spain as it is en­cour­aged by the num­ber and va­ri­ety of pas­sen­gers fly­ing be­tween Hol­land and T&T.

The cost of clos­ing T&T’s dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture gap has been es­ti­mat­ed at US$85 mil­lion, the In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank has stat­ed in its lat­est Caribbean Quar­ter­ly Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin.

In­fla­tion has risen across the Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­gion, ex­ceed­ing cen­tral banks’ tar­gets in most cas­es, the World Bank has stat­ed in its lat­est Glob­al Eco­nom­ic Prospects re­port.

In­vest­ing in wa­ter tanks and pumps has cost cit­i­zens more than a bil­lion dol­lars as al­most all of Trinidad and To­ba­go suf­fers from an in­ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply es­pe­cial­ly rur­al ar­eas.

If you think food prices are high now, ex­pect them to con­tin­ue to rise over the next year as the coun­try reels from im­port­ed food in­fla­tion.

I am op­ti­mistic that 2022, ce­teris paribus, will be a bet­ter year for the T&T econ­o­my, even though I don’t ex­pect it will mean in­di­vid­u­als will be bet­ter off.

Last week’s an­nounce­ment by Na­tion­al Flour Mills has prompt­ed many to won­der how their pock­ets will be af­fect­ed go­ing in­to 2022 as in­creased flour costs has al­ready start­ed a rip­ple ef­fect of price in­creas­es in T&T.

Beer lovers will now have to pay more for their favourite bev­er­age. This as Carib has in­creased its prices by $1.