COVID-19 plus crash­ing oil prices have caused the 2020 Bud­get deficit to bal­loon from $5.3 bil­lion to $15.5 bil­lion - and the 2020 Bud­get is now be­ing re­cal­i­brat­ed.

The bor­ders will be tem­porar­i­ly opened once again to al­low over 60 Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als cur­rent­ly strand­ed in Suri­name to re­turn home.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says he has no is­sue with any­one in the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment.

Gov­ern­ment will be giv­ing church­es and re­li­gious bod­ies $30 mil­lion over the next three months to dis­trib­ute to the poor and needy - and some salary re­lief grants may be out by to­mor­row, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says “not a dol­lar” has yet been with­drawn from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion, which con­tains US$6.1 bil­lion. How­ev­er, he says draw­downs will be made from the fund “on­ly as and when re­quired, and not ar­bi­trar­i­ly or by vaps.”

Venezue­lan mi­grant Lu­ci­na Cortez knows the need for so­cial dis­tanc­ing. How­ev­er, she can­not abide by this reg­u­la­tion as she lives in the same house with 33 oth­er mi­grants.For Cortez and her house­mates, life has be­come mis­er­able since COVID-19 re­stric­tions start­ed. Cortez said be­fore COVID-19, she did do­mes­tic chores for three Trinida­di­an’s fam­i­lies work­ing six days per week for $150 per day.

Gov­ern­ment has been able to dis­trib­ute 8,000 masks for pro­tec­tion against COVID-19 in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­cent­ly and up to 20,000 more are be­ing ob­tained this week­end, says Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) has warned Gov­ern­ment and State of­fi­cials over the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)’s en­force­ment of on­go­ing COVID-19 pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions. 

Main­tain­ing con­nec­tions and pos­i­tiv­i­ty are among keys to cop­ing and for Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, he’s found com­fort in read­ing the Bible and lis­ten­ing to the mu­sic of late sitar vir­tu­oso Ravi Shankar.

The re­turn of 33 Trinida­di­an na­tion­als from Bar­ba­dos could lead to a diplo­mat­ic spat be­tween the two coun­tries. This af­ter Bar­ba­dos For­eign Af­fairs and For­eign Trade Min­is­ter Jerome Wal­cott yes­ter­day said he was “deeply dis­turbed” by com­ments made by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young over the mat­ter.
In a re­lease is­sued by his min­istry yes­ter­day, Wal­cott said it was “re­gret­table” that Young had made a pub­lic state­ment re­fer­ring to coun­tries which had not re­spect­ed the fact that Trinidad and To­ba­go had closed its bor­ders in ref­er­ence to the Trinida­di­an na­tion­als’ re­turn home ear­li­er this week af­ter they were left strand­ed in Bar­ba­dos. He said this gave the wrong im­pres­sion on the mat­ter.

Soft drink man­u­fac­tur­er SM Jaleel has re­duced the salaries and hours of work of some em­ploy­ees at its plant at the Ota­heite In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in South Oropouche as it makes ad­just­ments dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) is pro­ject­ing a 60 per cent loss in rev­enue as the re­stric­tions in place for COVID-19 con­tin­ue.To mit­i­gate fur­ther loss­es, the com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ed to re-open its own pay­ment cen­tres soon in or­der to al­low cus­tomers to pay their bills.