Next year promis­es to be fruit­ful for T&T and Cu­raçao as the third and fi­nal round of ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Par­tial Scope Agree­ment be­tween the coun­tries is ex­pect­ed to be held in the first quar­ter. The agree­ment will see more of T&T’s prod­ucts ex­port­ed to Cu­raçao and the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of this coun­try’s ex­port base to the Dutch Caribbean is­land and vice ver­sa.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr David Lee yes­ter­day called on Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young to stop play­ing the blame game and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the loss of $1.3 bil­lion by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T.

Kingston, Ja­maica-based NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG), on Wednes­day de­clared prof­it af­ter tax of J$21.56 bil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, which is a 179 per cent im­prove­ment com­pared to the J$7.71 bil­lion the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group earned in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year. (US$1 = J$155)

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Paula Gopee-Scoon, is hop­ing that An­gos­tu­ra's re­sump­tion of ex­ports to Chi­na will con­tin­ue to boost for­eign ex­change re­turns to the coun­try.

The cur­rent chair­man and the board of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) are not to be blamed for the re­cent bil­lion dol­lar loss in­curred by the state-owned com­pa­ny, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day.

LI­AT20’s 5N-BUV, an Em­braer ERJ-145 op­er­at­ing as 5L365, touched down at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day with 15 pas­sen­gers on board from An­tigua. 

With pre­lim­i­nary work on the Drag­on Gas project al­ready tak­ing place, Ed­mond Thomp­son, vice-pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Nu­trien Trinidad says this will great­ly help the com­pa­ny con­tin­ue its op­er­a­tions.

Two weeks ago, at the launch of the Re­port on Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (RED) 2024 by CAF, the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, heaped sig­nif­i­cant praise on the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In a re­cent analy­sis, it was not­ed that 11 per cent of T&T’s cur­rent nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is used for do­mes­tic elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion. This is an in­crease from 8 per cent to 11 per cent, de­spite a sharp de­cline in over­all gas pro­duc­tion from 4.2 bcfd in 2013 to 2.4 bcfd in 2024. This in­di­cates min­i­mal progress in en­er­gy con­ser­va­tion or ef­fi­cien­cy with­in the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor, de­spite de­clin­ing re­sources.

While things are back to nor­mal af­ter al­most two months of protest on the Port of Port of Spain, there are some de­lays on the ex­port side.

In this space one week ago, un­der the head­line, ‘Would Trinidad be bet­ter off in­de­pen­dent of To­ba­go?’ this col­umn es­ti­mat­ed that val­ue of the trans­fers from Trinidad to To­ba­go in the 2025 fis­cal year would be $4.5 bil­lion, while cit­ing a pro­jec­tion from lo­cal econ­o­mist, Dr Vanus James, that the To­ba­go econ­o­my could gen­er­ate about $500 mil­lion in tax­es.

CIBC Caribbean Bank Lim­it­ed yes­ter­day re­port­ed re­port­ed net in­come of US$277.5 mil­lion for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2024, which is an in­crease of US$7.6 mil­lion or 3 per cent from pri­or year’s net in­come of US$269.9 mil­lion. net in­come an in­crease in­come for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2024.