The East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank (EC­CB) has ap­proved the sale of Roy­al Bank of Cana­da in the ter­ri­to­ries of the East­ern Caribbean.

Colm Im­bert has failed as Fi­nance Min­is­ter! There is no oth­er way of say­ing it. He must now do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign since it is clear that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will not do what he must know is in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try and sack his Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

Cab­i­net has ap­proved a TT$50 mil­lion ex­port boost­er ini­tia­tive for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, the ob­jec­tive of which is to pro­mote ex­ports of man­u­fac­tured goods.

In its unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults to the end of De­cem­ber 2020, CAL said the im­pact of the glob­al pan­dem­ic re­sult­ed in an op­er­at­ing loss (earn­ings be­fore in­ter­est and tax­es EBIT) of TT$738 mil­lion (US$109.2 mil­lion) on rev­enue of TT$802 mil­lion (US$118.6 mil­lion).

The coun­try’s three trade union fed­er­a­tions, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOS (FI­TUN) have ac­cused Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert of be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble and try­ing to de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion by blam­ing a de­ci­sion of the in­dus­tri­al court for NP mov­ing from a break-even po­si­tion to a loss.

Ex­pect fur­ther de­clines in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion this year and the coun­try is run­ning out of fis­cal space are the ob­ser­va­tions of one econ­o­mist and a for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s state­ment yes­ter­day, which paint­ed a grim pic­ture of this coun­try’s econ­o­my, was noth­ing more than a “cheap dis­trac­tion” to take away from the on­go­ing na­tion­al out­rage caused by the mur­der of An­drea Bharatt, econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran said.

And if the trend con­tin­ues, we may lose up to $5 bil­lion in rev­enue for fis­cal 2021. This fig­ure does not in­clude the ex­pect­ed $5 bil­lion short­fall al­ready pre­dict­ed for fis­cal 2021.

The elec­tion of US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, that coun­try’s re­turn to the Paris Cli­mate Ac­cord, and the ap­point­ment of a spe­cial en­voy on cli­mate change are all signs that the Unit­ed States is ready to lead the glob­al fight to re­duce car­bon emis­sion and to re­verse the neg­a­tive im­pact of cli­mate change.

The en­tire board of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT) has been re­placed one year be­fore their ap­point­ments were of­fi­cial­ly ex­pect­ed to have end­ed.

Fis­ter­ra En­er­gy SLU has an­nounced a part­ner­ship with Ke­nes­jay Green Lim­it­ed (KGL) to pur­sue a po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of KGL’s first ma­jor hy­dro­gen project, New­Gen.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (RFHL) has an­nounced a prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers of the par­ent of $391.1 mil­lion for the quar­ter end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2020.