Restau­rants in T&T and Bar­ba­dos are set to of­fer cus­tomers faster and more con­ve­nient pay­ment ex­pe­ri­ences fol­low­ing the launch of a new dig­i­tal pay­ment so­lu­tion by Pow­er­tranz and Mas­ter­card.

The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd (Wit­co) has re­port­ed a near 20 per cent in­crease in prof­it af­ter tax for the first nine months of 2026, de­spite con­tin­ued pres­sure from high­er ex­cise tax­es and the growth of il­lic­it cig­a­rette trade in T&T.

A ma­jor cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty af­fect­ing soft­ware used by a large pro­por­tion of the world’s web­sites has high­light­ed how busi­ness­es can re­main ex­posed to threats they may not even know ex­ist, ac­cord­ing to Dr Ronald Wal­cott, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Pre­ci­sion Cy­ber Tech­nolo­gies and Dig­i­tal So­lu­tions Ltd (PCDS).

From mod­ernising ports and im­prov­ing cus­toms pro­ce­dures to build­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al lo­gis­tics com­pa­ny, one of 2026’s Busi­ness Hall of Fame in­ductees, Ram­nar­ine Ram­per­sad, be­lieves T&T has the po­ten­tial to be­come a lead­ing trad­ing gate­way for the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, but must first ad­dress the in­ef­fi­cien­cies hold­ing back its com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ar­chi­tec­ture, en­gi­neer­ing, con­struc­tion and in­te­ri­or de­sign pro­fes­sion­als must look be­yond the do­mes­tic mar­ket and po­si­tion their ex­per­tise to se­cure a greater share of the Caribbean’s build­ing and de­vel­op­ment ex­pen­di­ture.

The Gov­ern­ment has of­fi­cial­ly be­gun the process of seek­ing po­ten­tial buy­ers for state-owned as­sets ear­marked for di­vest­ment.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says T&T is on the verge of sign­ing a key agree­ment with Venezuela that can pave the way to boost nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion and fur­ther re­vive this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor.

Psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty, work­place cul­ture and em­ploy­ee well-be­ing came un­der the spot­light at the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­cham TT) HSSE Con­fer­ence 2026, as ex­perts warned that some of the most sig­nif­i­cant risks fac­ing to­day’s work­force are no longer phys­i­cal, but psy­cho­log­i­cal.

Cari­CRIS has as­signed an in­vest­ment-grade cred­it rat­ings to the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica, with a sta­ble out­look, cit­ing the coun­try’s fis­cal com­mit­ments, debt-re­duc­tion strat­e­gy and con­tin­ued fi­nan­cial sec­tor sta­bil­i­ty de­spite the eco­nom­ic im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

En­er­gy econ­o­mist Gre­go­ry McGuire has warned that talk of an im­pend­ing en­er­gy boom in Trinidad and To­ba­go is pre­ma­ture, ar­gu­ing that new oil and gas projects will large­ly re­place de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion rather than de­liv­er sig­nif­i­cant growth.

The ar­rival of a busi­ness del­e­ga­tion from Venezuela’s State of Su­cre presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to strength­en eco­nom­ic ties be­tween T&T and the neigh­bour­ing Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry, even as geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions have com­pli­cat­ed re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries in re­cent times.

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt29Busi­ness­es must treat cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty as a board­room risk rather than an IT de­part­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, as fail­ures in­volv­ing crit­i­cal sup­pli­ers, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and es­sen­tial in­fra­struc­ture can dis­rupt op­er­a­tions, dam­age rep­u­ta­tions and ex­pose com­pa­nies to fi­nan­cial and reg­u­la­to­ry con­se­quences.