The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) has for­mal­ly no­ti­fied em­ploy­ers and work­ers that Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions will rise from 13.2 per cent to 16.2 per cent, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 5, 2026, fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the 2025 Fi­nance Bill.

Fol­low­ing years of what it de­scribed as “a se­vere and es­ca­lat­ing for­eign ex­change (forex or FX) cri­sis,” the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce yes­ter­day ad­vo­cat­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ex­change rate in which the TT dol­lar is aligned to de­mand and sup­ply, which the pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion says would of­fer “a prag­mat­ic ap­proach to restor­ing bal­ance in the forex mar­ket.”

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) yes­ter­day grant­ed a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) to EOG Re­sources for off­shore ex­plo­ration with­in the NC­MA 4(a) un­lim­it­ed block.

Cus­tomers af­fect­ed by pro­longed de­lays in­volv­ing Trin­ba­go Ex­press USA are set to re­ceive long-await­ed re­lief, as the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) has an­nounced that the de­liv­ery of car­go will now pro­ceed fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion.

Massy Group has closed the fi­nan­cial year 2025 on a strong foot­ing, de­liv­er­ing growth in rev­enue, prof­it, and cash gen­er­a­tion de­spite glob­al mar­ket volatil­i­ty.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), the par­ent com­pa­ny of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, yes­ter­day named Yash­mid Kara­math as the com­pa­ny’s new chair­man.

Ma­jor busi­ness groups and shop­pers are com­mend­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for launch­ing Op­er­a­tion Fes­tive Shield, a high-vis­i­bil­i­ty crime plan that has seen an im­me­di­ate in­crease in pa­trols ahead of Christ­mas and Car­ni­val 2026.

On No­vem­ber 29, in the con­text of the saga of Wash­ing­ton’s pres­sure cam­paign on left­ist Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s gov­ern­ment (chav­is­mo’s prin­ci­pal torch­bear­er),US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is­sued a warn­ing that Venezue­lan air­space should be con­sid­ered closed—prompt­ing back­lash from Cara­cas and its al­lies. (In­deed, Wash­ing­ton’s stance to­wards Venezuela has re­ceived plen­ty of push­back from Cu­ba and oth­ers.)

Some mem­bers of the pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ment are call­ing for the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC) to use its pow­ers to en­force the law against abuse of mo­nop­oly pow­er. (I ex­plained else­where that it can­not act against mo­nop­oly pow­er since that is not il­le­gal). It would be good to ex­plain what pow­ers are con­ferred on the FTC by the Fair Trad­ing Act (FTA).

In 1843, Charles Dick­ens pub­lished the clas­sic - A Christ­mas Car­ol. Since then, it has formed the ba­sis of many a Christ­mas con­cert. To­day it will form the ba­sis of an im­por­tant les­son in per­son­al fi­nance. This col­umn is based on a book ti­tled “The Fi­nan­cial Wis­dom of Ebenez­er Scrooge: 5 Prin­ci­ples To Trans­form Your Re­la­tion­ship with Mon­ey” by Ted Klontz, Brad Klontz and Rick Kahler.

Xtra Foods of­fi­cial­ly opened its sev­enth lo­ca­tion at South Park last Fri­day morn­ing, mark­ing the su­per­mar­ket chain’s first ex­pan­sion in­to south­ern Trinidad and a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in its na­tion­al growth.

I thank Mr. Fazir Khan, Pres­i­dent of the JCC, for his thought­ful en­gage­ment on the ques­tion of an­nu­al pro­cure­ment plan­ning un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­poal of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (PPDP­PA) in the Busi­ness Guardian of De­cem­ber 4, un­der the head­line ‘The OPRs ap­proach is prag­mat­ic.’