Glob­al rat­ing agency, Moody’s has con­firmed T&T’s Ba1 cred­it rat­ing in the midst of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but the out­look for the coun­try is not pos­i­tive, a re­lease from the Min­istry of Fi­nance has stat­ed.

Many Caribbean coun­tries will ex­pe­ri­ence a gen­er­al de­cline in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the com­ing months in light of COVID-19’s im­pact, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) has stat­ed.

As T&T slow­ly be­gins to reawak­en and tries to shake off the eco­nom­ic night­mare cre­at­ed by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, man­u­fac­tur­ers have tak­en op­er­a­tional steps nec­es­sary to pro­mote ef­fec­tive health and safe­ty prac­tices dic­tat­ed by law and good sense.

The JMMB Group will launch its small and medi­um en­ter­prise unit this month to pro­vide busi­ness plan­ning, fi­nan­cial ad­vice, and tar­get­ed so­lu­tions to fa­cil­i­tate the growth and ex­pan­sion of small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs).

Massy Hold­ings Ltd’s prof­it af­ter tax (PAT) has fall­en from $286.8 mil­lion to $262.7 mil­lion or by 8.4 per cent for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed March 31.

“Al­though the T&T econ­o­my has achieved very high growth rates it has nev­er been able to do so over a sus­tained pe­ri­od. In fact, giv­en that the econ­o­my is still dom­i­nat­ed by the en­er­gy sec­tor, shocks in this sec­tor have a dra­mat­ic im­pact on the en­tire econ­o­my —par­tic­u­lar­ly, ex­ports, gov­ern­ment rev­enue and ul­ti­mate­ly growth. The eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy must there­fore ad­dress this fun­da­men­tal is­sue: the need for the de­vel­op­ment of oth­er growth cen­tres, to achieve a broad-based econ­o­my where the struc­ture of pro­duc­tion is more bal­anced and where the coun­try is to some ex­tent in­su­lat­ed from eco­nom­ic shocks gen­er­al­ly from out­side.”

The CARI­COM Chair and Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter, Mia Mot­t­ley, has ex­pressed that in the midst of COVID-19, some small is­land de­vel­op­ing states will suc­cess­ful­ly re-en­gi­neer their economies, while some will col­lapse there­by hav­ing a rip­ple ef­fect on the na­tion and world.

Latin Amer­i­ca’s in­trare­gion­al trade is be­ing more af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 cri­sis than its ex­ports to the rest of the world.

Dig­i­cel has filed for bank­rupt­cy in Bermu­da but is in­sist­ing that it is busi­ness as usu­al.

T&T will be re-as­sessed soon by the Do­ing Busi­ness arm of the World Bank to de­ter­mine if the coun­try has seen im­prove­ment in the Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness in­di­ca­tors.

“I was ex­cit­ed. I was turn­ing a new page in my life and I was very hope­ful about what was to come,” Saman­tha, 35, told Guardian Me­dia.

For the first quar­ter of 2020 Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL Lim­it­ed (TTNGL) record­ed an af­ter tax prof­it of $6.9 mil­lion. This rep­re­sents an 85 per cent slide from the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2019 of $45.8 mil­lion.