For the sec­ond year in a row, two lead­ing Caribbean voic­es laid bare dis­parate par­a­digms on in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism. Speak­ing with an eye to­ward their re­spec­tive coun­tries' and the re­gion's most press­ing transna­tion­al chal­lenges, they shared their vi­sions for all the world to see.

Brand­ing is a key el­e­ment of any busi­ness, and one that Harpy Lyef En­ter­tain­ment own­er Jamelle Lovelace un­der­stands well.

Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go will change its dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el in Jan­u­ary 2027, with Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion Di­vi­sion be­com­ing the com­pa­ny’s main dis­trib­u­tor lo­cal­ly.

It is a ques­tion that has gone vi­ral on so­cial me­dia, but it has served as a stark mark­er of the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty faced by most cit­i­zens as most have not­ed the cost of liv­ing has large­ly in­creased.

The 2027 bud­get must be tied to a long-term eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy, not treat­ed as an­oth­er one-year ex­er­cise, Caribbean En­er­gy Cham­ber CEO Eu­gene Tiah has ar­gued.

A sup­pli­er can spend mon­ey prepar­ing a bid, lose the con­tract and have to de­cide whether it can af­ford to ask if the process was law­ful. Un­der the pro­posed Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, that de­ci­sion could be­come more ex­pen­sive and the time avail­able to make it much short­er.

Some peo­ple be­lieve gift­ed peo­ple can pre­dict the fu­ture. Of­ten, we cred­it en­tre­pre­neurs’ suc­cess to their abil­i­ty to see what comes next. The fact re­mains that our minds are ex­pla­na­tion ma­chines which fre­quent­ly get con­nec­tions be­tween phe­nom­e­na wrong. Do en­tre­pre­neurs re­al­ly see around the bend? The busi­ness land­scape is full of cas­es where en­tre­pre­neurs got it wrong, as many peo­ple do. If you can­not pre­dict the fu­ture, what is the best mod­el of think­ing when faced with un­cer­tain­ty?

Busi­ness­es across T&T and the wider Caribbean must em­brace ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and tech­no­log­i­cal change if they want to re­main com­pet­i­tive in the years ahead, ac­cord­ing to Southex CEO George Singh.

Cana­di­an busi­ness­es are show­ing grow­ing in­ter­est in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with man­u­fac­tur­ers and oth­er lo­cal com­pa­nies be­ing of­fered greater op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­ter the Cana­di­an mar­ket large­ly tar­iff-free, Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Michael Callan says.

Caribbean work­ers are high­ly skilled, but many are not equipped for the jobs emerg­ing as Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) trans­forms the work­place, ac­cord­ing to the founder of Il­lu­mi­nate In­tel­li­gence AI Con­sult­ing, who is an AI con­sul­tant and ed­u­ca­tor, Waynelle Sandy-Pat­ter­son.

West In­di­an Traders Ltd has of­fi­cial­ly closed its mile­stone 30th year of op­er­a­tion, mark­ing its de­but as a pub­licly list­ed en­ter­prise with a strong surge in top-line rev­enue along­side strate­gic op­er­a­tional re­align­ments.

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is once again in the spot­light. The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, has passed the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives but, at the time of writ­ing, there is no fi­nal out­come