Ja­maican con­glom­er­ate, GraceKennedy Lim­it­ed (GK) yes­ter­day re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax to­talling J$8.9 bil­lion (US$57 mil­lion), for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

The cam­paign for the po­si­tion of sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) has been taint­ed by mis­in­for­ma­tion and po­lit­i­cal dis­tor­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly on so­cial me­dia.

On March 3, 2022, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, told the me­dia at a news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre that Cab­i­net had de­cid­ed, on that day to set up a sub-com­mit­tee look in­to 51 per cent state-owned TSTT.

Claire Gomez-Miller, char­tered cer­ti­fied ac­coun­tant and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of British Amer­i­can Com­pa­ny Trinidad (BAT), is urg­ing cor­po­rate lead­ers who move from the pri­vate to pub­lic sec­tor to trans­fer best prac­tices from the busi­ness world.

Four com­mer­cial banks head­quar­tered in Port of Spain de­clared to­tal, au­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­its of $4.78 bil­lion in their 2024 fi­nan­cial years.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump’s re­newed ‘Amer­i­ca First’ trade pol­i­cy is a must-watch de­vel­op­ment for the Caribbean giv­en the US’s role as the re­gion’s pri­ma­ry trad­ing part­ner – both as an ex­port mar­ket and an im­port source.

En­er­gy econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Fran­cis­co Monal­di is warn­ing that the an­nounce­ment by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion last week that it would ter­mi­nate the li­cence of US oil and gas multi­na­tion­al Chevron in Venezuela’s en­er­gy sec­tor could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact Venezuela’s Drag­on gas deal with T&T.

With the in­flux of vis­i­tors and tourists in T&T and peo­ple not want­i­ng to dri­ve to var­i­ous fetes and oth­er events for the Car­ni­val, ride-hail­ing com­pa­nies are see­ing a ma­jor spike in their ser­vice.

Car­ni­val 2025 is be­ing held un­der a lit­tle bit of a cloud. On De­cem­ber 30, 2024, the Gov­ern­ment de­clared a na­tion­wide State of Emer­gency (SoE). Two weeks lat­er, on Jan­u­ary 13, 2025, Par­lia­ment ex­tend­ed the SoE by three months.

Trinidad and To­ba­go needs to put prop­er poli­cies in place to trans­form the foun­da­tions of the Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, un­der­writ­ing their evo­lu­tion in­to a com­pet­i­tive in­dus­try in the glob­al mar­ket­place.

De­spite the threat by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to end all oil and nat­ur­al gas agree­ments ap­proved by the pre­vi­ous US gov­ern­ment for Venezuela, a top econ­o­mist in that coun­try re­mains op­ti­mistic that all is not lost for Venezuela, the coun­try with the world’s largest re­serves of oil.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter and act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young says it is con­cern­ing that a for­mer prime min­is­ter as­pir­ing to lead T&T again “would con­tin­u­al­ly at­tempt to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion” (sic) and in­di­cate to po­ten­tial in­vestors that she and her par­ty would not ho­n­our le­gal agree­ments that may be en­tered in­to for the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens.