The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd (Wit­co) has record­ed a prof­it af­ter tax of $105 mil­lion for the three months end­ed 31 March, 2020. This rep­re­sents a $4.9 mil­lion or 4.9 per cent in­crease over the same pe­ri­od in 2019.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has said the Gov­ern­ment will be pro­vid­ing fur­ther sup­port to small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) through a $300m loan pro­gramme.

For the three months end­ed March 31, 2020, Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML) reg­is­tered a net prof­it of $1.3 mil­lion, up $6.7 mil­lion when com­pared to a net loss of $5.4 mil­lion for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2019.

In the face of a chal­leng­ing fi­nan­cial en­vi­ron­ment caused by COVID-19, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion Nigel Ed­wards is ex­press­ing hope for the fu­ture.

The First Cit­i­zens Group has record­ed a prof­it af­ter tax for first six month of the 2020 fi­nan­cial year of $404.4 mil­lion a 2.4 per cent in­crease of 2.4 per when com­pared to same pe­ri­od last year.

The em­ploy­ees of An­gos­tu­ra Ltd have do­nat­ed more than $1 mil­lion to pur­chase food items for the most vul­ner­a­ble who are fi­nan­cial­ly im­pact­ed by the ef­fects of the COVID-19 virus on the econ­o­my.

There is a great dan­ger in group­think and be­liev­ing your own rhetoric. Group­think is es­sen­tial­ly the prac­tice of think­ing or mak­ing de­ci­sions as a group, re­sult­ing typ­i­cal­ly in un­chal­lenged, poor-qual­i­ty de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

De­spite hav­ing closed its doors on April 6, 2020, ow­ing to manda­to­ry COVID-19 lock­down re­stric­tions, Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd.(PHL), the lo­cal fran­chisee for KFC, Piz­za Hut, TGI Fri­days, Sub­way and Star­bucks, is giv­ing its hourly-paid em­ploy­ees ham­pers and chick­en.

COVID-19 has shak­en the foun­da­tions of the T&T econ­o­my by cre­at­ing a mas­sive neg­a­tive shock of oil and gas prices and by cre­at­ing a ma­jor cash flow cri­sis that threat­ens wide­spread bank­rupt­cy of busi­ness­es and a wrecked eco­nom­ic land­scape, says se­nior econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James.

BPTT, the coun­try’s largest nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­er, has said it is plan­ning for a phased re­turn to its Port of Spain and Ga­le­o­ta of­fices but notes that it will be based on what the gov­ern­ment de­cides, in terms of its re-open­ing time­lines.

The Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund (NIF) has record­ed a de­crease in net prof­it of $147.4 mil­lion for the pe­ri­od end­ed 31 March, 2020.

In an unau­dit­ed sum­ma­ry of its con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the three months end­ed March 31, 2020 An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd has record­ed a first quar­ter prof­it of $13.096 mil­lion.