Pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd RFHL) Nigel Bap­tiste has an­nounced a prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers of the par­ent com­pa­ny of $543 mil­lion for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, a de­cline of $240 mil­lion or 30.6 per cent be­low the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

The Roadmap com­mit­tee, ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to come up with short-term plans to get the econ­o­my go­ing and long-term strate­gies to make it more ef­fi­cient and re­silient, is ex­pect­ed to present its ini­tial re­port by the end of the week.

Up to forty con­tract work­ers are ex­pect­ed to loose their jobs as Nu­trien Ltd has an­nounced that it will be shut­ting down one of its am­mo­nia plants in T&T for a min­i­mum of three months.

As Vir­gin At­lantic has an­nounced that it prepar­ing to cut al­most a third of its 10,000-mem­ber work­force and close its Lon­don Gatwick op­er­a­tions to sur­vive the COVID-19 cri­sis, it can have an up­side for To­ba­go.

The se­nior ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) have com­mit­ted a por­tion of their month­ly in­come to as­sist stu­dents that are see­ing hard times in the midst of COVID-19.

The NGC has signed a Frame­work Agree­ment with Primera Oil and Gas Ltd-- a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration Inc (Touch­stone)--and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Her­itage) for the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas from Touch­stone’s re­cent land dis­cov­ery.

Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny Ltd has record­ed a prof­it of $703 mil­lion (US 104.1) for fis­cal 2019. 

COVID-19 has al­ready led to the can­cel­la­tion car­ni­val events for 2020 all over the world, and T&T’s lead­ing mas and event prac­ti­tion­ers have con­tend­ed that if Car­ni­val 2021 is can­celled, the im­pact would be huge and dev­as­tat­ing on the coun­try’s econ­o­my. 

Sev­er­al econ­o­mists have dis­agreed with Mar­la Dukha­ran that the coun­try will be forced to re­turn to an In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) pro­gramme next year al­though they ad­mit it will be chal­leng­ing

A joint sur­vey of the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has found that as a re­sult of the coun­try’s COVID-19 mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures, 36 per cent of the busi­ness­es sur­veyed have ter­mi­nat­ed full time em­ploy­ees and 55 per cent have ter­mi­nat­ed part time or con­trac­tu­al em­ploy­ees.

To­day the tran­si­tion com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to come up with plans on how T&T will nav­i­gate the se­vere eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion brought on by the fall-out from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will present their ini­tial re­port to the gov­ern­ment.

State-owned Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd has record­ed a prof­it $1.4bil­lion for 2019, which rep­re­sents the first ten months of op­er­a­tion.