As the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) marked its 29th mile­stone on Sat­ur­day, the or­gan­i­sa­tion stands as a tes­ta­ment to the re­silience and adapt­abil­i­ty re­quired to nav­i­gate the volatile wa­ters of mod­ern fi­nance.

Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen says the state com­pa­ny has re­in­forced its po­si­tion in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive nat­ur­al gas mar­ket af­ter sign­ing a new sup­ply con­tract with EOG Re­sources Trinidad Ltd on Fri­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port of SpaiThe agree­ment, con­clud­ed eight months ahead of sched­ule, re­news an ex­ist­ing arrange­ment due to ex­pire on De­cem­ber 31 and se­cures gas sup­ply for the next two years.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says this coun­try stands to be the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ry of BP’s Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, ar­gu­ing that, re­gard­less of up­stream ac­tiv­i­ty, the coun­try re­mains cen­tral to mon­e­tise any near or cross-bor­der gas.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty has grant­ed a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) for a Mar­riott-brand­ed ho­tel and re­sort at Rocky Point, Mt Irvine, To­ba­go, mark­ing a key step for a project aimed at ex­pand­ing the is­land’s tourism ca­pac­i­ty.

As Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd im­ple­ment­ed an in­crease in fees on Fri­day, the Cen­tral Bank dis­closed it does not reg­u­late com­mer­cial bank charges in T&T di­rect­ly, as its “leg­isla­tive au­thor­i­ty to reg­u­late fees and charges is de­fined by sec­tion 44A(1) of the Cen­tral Bank Act and is lim­it­ed to fix­ing max­i­mum and min­i­mum in­ter­est rates, fees and charges on loans, ad­vances and oth­er cred­it fa­cil­i­ties.”

The board of pub­licly list­ed TTNGL on Sat­ur­day an­nounced that it in­tends to pro­vide share­hold­ers with the op­tion to re­ceive div­i­dend pay­ment in ei­ther US dol­lars or TT dol­lars.

New­ly in­stalled pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Karen Yip Chuck, has said while cus­tomer con­cerns about the in­crease in the bank’s fees are valid, there has been a “com­plex and cost­ly en­vi­ron­ment” cre­at­ed by cyb­ser­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and reg­u­la­tions re­quired for an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing frame­works.

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai took the Bank’s se­nior lead­er­ship to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) last Fri­day, sharp­en­ing fo­cus on To­ba­go-spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy and clos­ing long-stand­ing da­ta gaps that have con­strained plan­ning.

Just one day be­fore the Re­pub­lic Bank was set to in­tro­duce in­creased bank­ing fees for cus­tomers Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (RFHL), an­nounced prof­its at­trib­ut­able to its eq­ui­ty hold­ers of $1.07 bil­lion for the first half of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year.

The ver­sion peo­ple miss runs for months be­fore any of that ex­ists. Held to­geth­er by group chats, dis­con­nect­ed spread­sheets, and a few peo­ple who car­ry the en­tire op­er­a­tion in their heads be­cause no­body built any­thing bet­ter.

There are kinder­gartens clos­ing in Uruguay and Chile. Busi­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go are pay­ing more for pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty. A pirogue is cross­ing the Gulf of Paria from Venezuela with ques­tion­able car­go. A pen­sion­er in Trinidad is anx­ious about his NIS ben­e­fits.

Be­low-av­er­age labour pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, in­creas­ing debt ra­tios fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and lim­it­ed for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment have se­vere­ly im­pact­ed growth in the Caribbean.