Every econ­o­my de­pends on its peo­ple. While in­fra­struc­ture, tech­nol­o­gy and in­vest­ment are es­sen­tial for growth, it is skilled pro­fes­sion­als who trans­form ideas in­to in­no­va­tion, busi­ness­es in­to in­dus­tries and am­bi­tion in­to eco­nom­ic progress. Yet be­neath the sur­face, a qui­eter threat has been steadi­ly grow­ing. A threat ca­pa­ble of weak­en­ing en­tire in­dus­tries long be­fore its ef­fects be­come ful­ly vis­i­ble.

The un­cer­tain fu­ture of the Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre is fu­elling anx­i­ety across this coun­try’s tourism sec­tor, with tourism of­fi­cials and econ­o­mists warn­ing that de­lays in reach­ing an agree­ment could hurt busi­ness con­fi­dence, tourism plan­ning and the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crude oil and con­den­sate pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 54,209 bar­rels per day dur­ing the first three months of 2026, build­ing on the gains record­ed last year and of­fer­ing an en­cour­ag­ing in­di­ca­tion that the coun­try’s long de­cline in oil out­put may be eas­ing.

They com­mand al­most as much at­ten­tion as the bride and groom at wed­dings, can match the food lines at grad­u­a­tions, and peo­ple can’t get enough of them at par­ties and fetes. Their in­tent? To en­ter­tain guests, and cre­ate in­stant phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal keep­sakes that most of­ten find their way on so­cial me­dia.

Po­lit­i­cal rhetoric fu­elled by racial di­vi­sion pos­es an im­me­di­ate, ma­te­r­i­al threat to T&T’s eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to a grow­ing cho­rus of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts, econ­o­mist, and busi­ness lead­ers.

T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to In­dia, Chan­dra­dath Singh, is call­ing on T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to take ad­van­tage of busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties that In­dia, one of the world’s largest economies, has to of­fer.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank has re­port­ed prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers of $98.68 mil­lion for the six-months end­ed June 30, 2026, a 20 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $82.19 mil­lion it earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

It is launch day. Ren­der­ings glow on a screen, cam­eras flash, of­fi­cials promise jobs and ex­ec­u­tives ap­plaud. A com­ple­tion date ap­pears in the press re­lease. Months lat­er, the sign re­mains, but mo­men­tum has thinned. An ap­proval is pend­ing, own­er­ship has shift­ed, costs have climbed and the pub­lic has heard lit­tle more.

Last week Mon­day, mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er ad­vo­cate, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, wrote to the com­pa­ny sec­re­tary of Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd, tak­ing is­sue with the fail­ure and/or re­fusal of Agos­ti­ni Ltd to com­ply with takeover by­law 26 (2), which re­quires mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers of a com­pa­ny be­ing tak­en over to be giv­en cer­tain op­tions if the ac­quir­ing com­pa­ny goes be­yond 90 per cent.

Yes­ter­day, my col­league, se­nior mul­ti­me­dia busi­ness re­porter An­drea Perez-Sobers, wrote the lead sto­ry for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian un­der the head­line ‘Hilton warns of Sep­tem­ber 18 ex­it as lease arrange­ment yet to be fi­nalised.’ The Hilton’s dead­line for the con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions to ex­tend the lease is im­por­tant, news­wor­thy, and con­se­quen­tial be­cause the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre has been an im­por­tant part of T&T’s post-In­de­pen­dence his­to­ry as the coun­try’s first ma­jor ho­tel with an in­ter­na­tion­al brand.

Last Fri­day, Ju­ly 31, some­thing not seen since 1998 hap­pened. Japan and the US in­ter­vened to­geth­er in the for­eign ex­change mar­ket to sup­port the Japan­ese yen. The yen had fall­en to al­most ¥164 to US$1, its weak­est lev­el since 1986. Japan sold for­eign cur­ren­cy and bought yen. The US Trea­sury, act­ing through the Fed­er­al Re­serve Bank of New York, al­so bought yen.

The Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to halt elec­tric­i­ty from flow­ing on­to the na­tion­al grid from T&T’s largest so­lar farm has ig­nit­ed fierce crit­i­cism from for­mer min­is­ters, en­er­gy ex­perts and re­new­able en­er­gy ad­vo­cates, all warn­ing the coun­try risks un­der­min­ing its en­er­gy tran­si­tion and wast­ing an in­vest­ment that was ex­pect­ed to trans­form the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor.