an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Even as ma­jor com­pa­nies scale back op­er­a­tions, re­struc­ture, or ex­it parts of do­mes­tic mar­ket, busi­ness­es across Trinidad and To­ba­go say they are not ready to give up on the coun­try.

The chron­ic short­age of for­eign ex­change dom­i­nat­ed dis­cus­sions on day two of the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), as lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers high­light­ed to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian the ex­treme bank­ing hur­dles and par­al­lel mar­ket re­liance cur­rent­ly keep­ing their busi­ness­es alive.

The Cen­tral Bank said yes­ter­day that it is about to im­ple­ment mea­sures that are ex­pect­ed to “pro­vide mean­ing­ful re­lief” on the long-stand­ing is­sue of the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change in the near to medi­um term.

En­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it has en­er­gised the 2026 Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), as sev­er­al small busi­ness­es flocked to the event hop­ing to el­e­vate their brands in what most ad­mit­ted was a try­ing eco­nom­ic pe­ri­od.

The Food Dis­trib­u­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (FDA) has elect­ed its ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee for the up­com­ing term, with Jake Gillette, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of West In­di­an Traders Ltd (WITL), ap­point­ed as chair­man.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance an­nounced yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment was suc­cess­ful in rais­ing an US$800 mil­lion sov­er­eign bond in the US mar­ket.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fis­cal po­si­tion strength­ened dur­ing the first sev­en months of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year, with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment record­ing a small­er over­all deficit de­spite low­er en­er­gy rev­enues, as stronger col­lec­tions from non-en­er­gy sources helped off­set the de­cline.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says its up­com­ing trade and in­vest­ment mis­sion to Cana­da will fo­cus on prepar­ing busi­ness­es to se­cure deals be­fore they board the plane.

US-based Bleachtech LLC, a mem­ber com­pa­ny of the ANSA McAL Group, has ap­point­ed Craig La Croix as its new chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 1, 2026.

Search changed. How peo­ple shop changed. How peo­ple find busi­ness­es changed. Google held its I/O con­fer­ence in May, and Ap­ple held its World­wide De­vel­op­ers Con­fer­ence in June, both sig­nalling one of the biggest shifts the in­ter­net has seen in years, yet most busi­ness­es I work with across the re­gion are still run­ning a play­book built for the in­ter­net as it ex­ist­ed two or three years ago.

Good re­sults in­fre­quent­ly get achieved with no process or a very flawed process. How­ev­er good re­sults of­ten­times are the re­sult of a good process. If we want a high con­fi­dence lev­el that we will get a good re­sult, it is a no brain­er that we must have a good process.

Ca­roni dairy farmer Suresh Rami­ah spent the last three years in­vest­ing his life sav­ings in­to his dairy farm, wait­ing for 23 young heifers to ma­ture and dou­ble his milk pro­duc­tion by ear­ly next year.