The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) must be com­mend­ed for pro­vid­ing the coun­try with its plans for the econ­o­my over the next five years, should it come to pow­er.

Two econ­o­mists have called the UNC’s pro­posed plans for the fis­cal man­age­ment of the na­tion ques­tion­able and im­prob­a­ble.

For oil pro­duc­ers in the re­gion like T&T, oil prices have re­cov­ered some­what and sta­bilised at around the US$40 per bar­rel (WTI), af­ter reach­ing his­toric lows.

COVID-19 has rav­aged the glob­al econ­o­my, but In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) can com­bat the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic in many ways.

Al­though the two com­pa­nies, the West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (Wit­co) and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) re­ceived spe­cial ex­emp­tions from the Gov­ern­ment to re­sume op­er­a­tions, ear­ly dur­ing the “stay-at-home” pe­ri­od of the cur­rent pan­dem­ic, their fi­nan­cial re­sults were strik­ing­ly dis­sim­i­lar.

And, ac­cord­ing to re­ports, T&T is robbed of $30 mil­lion a year be­cause of this il­lic­it trade.

“Flights will ini­tial­ly op­er­ate be­tween Bar­ba­dos to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Grena­da with oth­er des­ti­na­tions to be added once the reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals are re­ceived,” Caribbean Air­lines stat­ed.

On May 14, I wrote an ar­ti­cle ti­tled “Save the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor.” It was meant to urge the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion to see the great dan­ger the coun­try was in and how our prized pos­ses­sion had been brought to its knees by both the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment and the do­mes­tic gas sit­u­a­tion.

Ex­pect a new deep wa­ter bid round ear­ly next year, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan has an­nounced.

Dig­i­tal cam­paigns are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant in the lo­cal elec­toral con­text as po­lit­i­cal par­ties, whether big or small, gar­ner sup­port for the up­com­ing Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion in light of COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

It is elec­tion time again. It is a time of­ten re­ferred to as the sil­ly sea­son when politi­cians make all kinds of claims and promis­es in an ef­fort to con­vince the elec­torate to vote for them.

The chair­man of Cari­com and Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gon­salves has re­vealed that there will be a meet­ing in the com­ing days to dis­cuss an al­ter­na­tive to liq­ui­dat­ing LI­AT 1974 Ltd.