Last week’s wave of pub­lic anx­i­ety over the ru­mour of re­gion­al con­flict may have sub­sided for now, but it re­vealed how swift­ly per­cep­tion can shift to pan­ic. In a mat­ter of hours, so­cial me­dia spec­u­la­tion led to long queues and bulk buy­ing at some su­per­mar­kets, not be­cause sup­plies were tru­ly threat­ened, but be­cause peo­ple feared they might be.

Busi­ness­men are cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic about the new wave of con­struc­tion and in­vest­ment be­ing promised, call­ing it vi­sion­ary but warn­ing that ex­e­cu­tion, and not talk will de­ter­mine its suc­cess.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon is ex­pect­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s em­ploy­ment dri­ve to cre­ate large scale em­ploy­ment for the coun­try’s un­der­em­ployed and un­em­ployed.

KC Con­fec­tionery Ltd, one of T&T’s most icon­ic her­itage brands, has an­nounced the suc­cess­ful ex­port of its new gin­ger mint line ex­ten­sions to Cana­da—a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic push for in­ter­na­tion­al growth.

ANSA McAL yes­ter­day de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $181.83 mil­lion for the three months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, a 21 per cent in­crease com­pared to the group’s $150.17 mil­lion prof­it for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd yes­ter­day re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $152.5 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, a 28.3 per cent in­crease com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

Mus­son (Ja­maica) Ltd has widened its re­gion­al foot­print with the com­ple­tion of its 100 per cent ac­qui­si­tion of Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd, a deal that marks an­oth­er ma­jor step in the group’s steady ex­pan­sion across T&T.

Con­struc­tion com­pa­ny NH In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) Ltd (NH) is spear­head­ing a co­or­di­nat­ed busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty re­sponse to com­bat an emerg­ing fraud threat.

US en­er­gy econ­o­mist Dr Fran­cis­co Monal­di be­lieves that the break­down of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Venezuela is on­ly a “pause” and in­evitably busi­ness will tri­umph over pol­i­tics with en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions re­sum­ing.

In this space, in the Busi­ness Guardian pub­li­ca­tion of Oc­to­ber 16, this jour­nal­ist wrote a com­men­tary head­lined ‘Is Govt plan­ning to bor­row $19B in 2026?’ That com­men­tary orig­i­nat­ed be­cause when I went look­ing for the Draft Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue 2026 on the night of Oc­to­ber 13, which was the same day that Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo de­liv­ered the fis­cal pack­age for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, it was not avail­able on the web­site of the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Just over a week af­ter To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val, there are wor­ry­ing signs that the event has done lit­tle to move the nee­dle in the To­ba­go busi­ness sec­tor.

With Guyana ex­pect­ing to be­gin pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty from nat­ur­al gas as soon as next year, the coun­try’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is po­si­tion­ing it­self to be­come the Caribbean’s next ma­jor man­u­fac­tur­ing hub.