As Trinidad and To­ba­go faces a down­turn in in­ter­na­tion­al tourist ar­rivals, tourism stake­hold­ers have be­come in­creas­ing­ly vo­cal about the need for ur­gent re­form, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ar­eas of des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing and for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion.

A for­mer deputy gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, Dr Ter­rence Far­rell, be­lieves that cor­po­rate gov­er­nance in state en­ter­pris­es is flawed and those en­ter­pris­es ex­ist sim­ply for “po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age” in T&T.

In the com­men­tary in this space on Au­gust 14, which was head­lined, “Why is Kam­la at­tack­ing Re­pub­lic Bank?” it was re­port­ed that three cor­po­rate en­ti­ties con­trolled by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, owned 84,263,895 shares in Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd. RFHL is the largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), with as­sets of $128.96 bil­lion (US$19.24 bil­lion) as at June 30, 2025.

Ac­cel­er­at­ing the rate of in­no­va­tion in Trinidad & To­ba­go (T&T) can be de­scribed as an ur­gent ac­tion to ad­dress a cri­sis. How­ev­er, ac­cess to fi­nance lim­its the abil­i­ty to ad­dress this cri­sis to ur­gent­ly con­vert in­sights in­to con­cepts, con­cepts in­to in­no­va­tions and in­no­va­tions in­to items of com­mer­cial val­ue. Ac­cess to fi­nance is nec­es­sary to sup­port T&T’s in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem and to in­cen­tivise bring­ing in­no­va­tions to mar­ket. What makes fi­nanc­ing in­no­va­tion chal­leng­ing is the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with in­no­va­tions. While in­no­va­tions are not nec­es­sar­i­ly new, there is al­ways nov­el­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with the en­hanced val­ue that prod­uct, ser­vice or process in­no­va­tion brings. In this ar­ti­cle key ar­eas of in­no­va­tion fi­nanc­ing are dis­cussed in the con­text of in­no­va­tions in the SME sec­tor in Trinidad & To­ba­go.

With the 2026 na­tion­al bud­get on the hori­zon, T&T is once again brac­ing for a fis­cal deficit.

The Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex (GII) 2025 has been re­leased, and T&T has once again per­formed poor­ly, hit­ting a his­toric low of 114th, a steep fall from our peak of 68th in 2008. Even more alarm­ing, we are ranked last among high in­come coun­tries, and with­in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, we placed 17th out of 21 na­tions

I have spent the past cou­ple weeks de­bunk­ing some of the flawed eco­nom­ic ar­gu­ments re­lat­ed to our for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion that find their way in­to our na­tion­al dis­cus­sion. To­day we con­tin­ue in that vein.

In the sleepy cap­i­tal of this amaz­ing­ly beau­ti­ful Caribbean is­land, where the pace of life moves to the rhythm of trade winds, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are grap­pling with an ex­tra­or­di­nary prob­lem: what to do with tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in un­ex­pect­ed rev­enue. The wind­fall didn’t come from dis­cov­er­ing oil or strik­ing gold. In­stead, An­guil­la hit the dig­i­tal jack­pot through two sim­ple let­ters: A and I.

The Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Bill 2025, which seeks to ban the pur­chase, sale, ex­change, or trans­fer of cryp­tocur­ren­cies, in­clud­ing Bit­coin, un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2027, has drawn sharp crit­i­cism from the lo­cal fin­tech sec­tor.

The Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (MPAAI), has an­nounced its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the glob­al 50-in-5 cam­paign.

Unilever Caribbean Ltd (UCL) is mov­ing full steam ahead with its strate­gic piv­ot to­ward beau­ty and per­son­al care, fol­low­ing its de­ci­sion to ex­it the de­clin­ing laun­dry pow­der seg­ment.

The pub­li­ca­tion of the Ex­im­Bank’s for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tions and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that leg­is­la­tion will be brought to Par­lia­ment be­fore the end of the year to al­low the Cen­tral Bank of T&T to re­veal all for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tions have raised con­cerns but some busi­ness­men be­lieve this se­quence has prompt­ed a nec­es­sary dis­cus­sion about the is­sue.