Many peo­ple look­ing for their first home or prop­er­ty have an in­com­plete pic­ture of what is ac­tu­al­ly re­quired to close the deal.

Marc Per­saud, co-founder and di­rec­tor of Caribbean Drag­ons, be­lieves the re­gion has reached an in­flec­tion point, one where in­no­va­tion must move from rhetoric to re­al­i­ty, if economies like Trinidad and To­ba­go are to with­stand the pres­sures high­light­ed in last Thurs­day’s re­vi­sion of T&T’s out­look from sta­ble to neg­a­tive by the glob­al rat­ing agency, S&P.

The se­vere na­tion­al risks as­so­ci­at­ed with fail­ing to com­bat il­lic­it fi­nance dom­i­nat­ed the agen­da at the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T (CCULTT)’s sixth an­nu­al vir­tu­al com­pli­ance of­fi­cers’ con­fer­ence on Sep­tem­ber 25 and 26, 2025.

The Ja­maica gov­ern­ment has de­scribed as a “very pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment” for the is­land, the lat­est rat­ings by the US-based Stan­dard and Poor’s (S&P) that up­grad­ed the coun­try’s long-term for­eign and lo­cal cur­ren­cy sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ings from ‘BB-’ to BB,’ while its out­look re­mains “pos­i­tive”.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has dis­missed what he de­scribed as fear-mon­ger­ing over the lat­est rat­ings ac­tion from Stan­dard & Poor’s (S&P), say­ing that spread­ing alarm has long been a pas­time of PNM pup­pets and pup­peteers.

The Cen­tral Bank said yes­ter­day that, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), re­al GDP con­tract­ed by 2.1 per cent (year-on-year) dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2025, with out­put de­clines in both the en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors of 4.8 per cent and 1.0 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly.

Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day un­veiled a new board of di­rec­tors for the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ex­im­Bank), the state fi­nan­cial com­pa­ny that has been at­tacked by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Na­tion­al En­er­gy pres­i­dent Dr Ver­non Pal­too will be pro­ceed­ing on ear­ly re­tire­ment, bring­ing an end to more than two decades of ser­vice to the state-owned en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ta­tor.
How­ev­er, sources told the Trinidad Guardian that Pal­too was in fact forced in­to pre-re­tire­ment leave, and when Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen was con­tact­ed, he said, “I am not aware of this and I am in the mid­dle of a meet­ing at this time.”

The spe­cial meet­ing to elect a new board for First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings will be held on Oc­to­ber 8 at the Lord Kitch­en­er (Ald­wyn Roberts) Au­di­to­ri­um at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts at 10am, ac­cord­ing to a no­tice to the bank's share­hold­ers pub­lished in to­day's news­pa­pers.

The Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex (GII) 2025 has been re­leased, and T&T has once again per­formed poor­ly, hit­ting a his­toric low of 114th, a steep fall from our peak of 68th in 2008. Even more alarm­ing, we are ranked last among high in­come coun­tries, and with­in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, we placed 17th out of 21 na­tions

Econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran has de­liv­ered a scathing cri­tique of T&T’s eco­nom­ic man­age­ment, as­sert­ing that the coun­try’s so­cial con­tract is “bro­ken.”

In the com­men­tary in this space on Au­gust 14, which was head­lined, “Why is Kam­la at­tack­ing Re­pub­lic Bank?” it was re­port­ed that three cor­po­rate en­ti­ties con­trolled by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, owned 84,263,895 shares in Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd. RFHL is the largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), with as­sets of $128.96 bil­lion (US$19.24 bil­lion) as at June 30, 2025.