This coun­try spent close to $33 bil­lion on Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion (SCP) pay­ments for the ten years from 2012 to 2021.

The petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor has been a life jack­et for the T&T econ­o­my ad­mit­ted Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert as he pre­sent­ed the mid-year bud­get re­view last Mon­day.

“On av­er­age cus­tomers have com­plained about wait­ing for tech­ni­cians for quite some time to get ser­vices, so now you can get it soon­er rather than lat­er,” Pru­dence Williams-La Bor­de Flow’s man­ag­er, per­for­mance op­ti­mi­sa­tion told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA) Mark Edghill says the eco­nom­ic hard­ships caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has fu­elled a buy­er’s mar­ket that is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in this coun­try’s com­mer­cial prop­er­ty sec­tor.

While busi­ness­es have wel­comed the pay­ment of out­stand­ing (Val­ue Added Tax) VAT re­funds and a pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic pro­jec­tion as an­nounced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert dur­ing his mid-year bud­get re­view on Mon­day, they be­lieve, how­ev­er, that more must be done to en­able a more con­ducive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment which the min­is­ter could have in­clud­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Richard Young, chair­man of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC) in a world where phys­i­cal cash con­tin­ues to be re­placed by dig­i­tal mon­ey, this coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment of a ro­bust and ag­ile dig­i­tal econ­o­my will be fun­da­men­tal to its fu­ture eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty.

In June 2021, CAF--De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca--grant­ed a loan of US$175 mil­lion ($1.19 bil­lion) to T&T, with the ob­jec­tive of mod­ernising the trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture in the coun­try.

Af­ter two years the Cen­tral Bank’s mu­se­um has re­opened with its Jour­ney to Poly­mer Ban­knotes among the key fea­tures.

Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed has record­ed a prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion of US$26.866 mil­lion for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2021.

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter, Paula Gopee-Scoon yes­ter­day wel­comed se­nior ex­ec­u­tives of Se­prod Ltd and AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings man­age­ment to her of­fice as part of a cour­tesy vis­it.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says it is en­cour­aged by The Fi­nance (Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion) Bill which was pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day “as it would re­sult in re­lief of fi­nan­cial pres­sure on busi­ness­es and pro­vide for a stim­u­lus to the T&T econ­o­my as a whole.”

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon says the mid-year bud­get re­view de­liv­ered by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­deed sug­gests that the macro-econ­o­my fi­nal­ly has some breath­ing room es­pe­cial­ly af­ter six long years of neg­a­tive eco­nom­ic per­for­mance, wors­ened by the pan­dem­ic.