Fund­ing for na­tion­al ob­ser­vances, in­clud­ing Di­vali, African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day and In­di­an Ar­rival Day, is set to in­crease to $4 mil­lion in fis­cal 2027, while sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes and cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions are al­so ear­marked for high­er al­lo­ca­tions.

Trade union leader Michael An­nisette is cau­tion­ing against pub­licly crit­i­cis­ing pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s warn­ing that un­der­per­form­ing work­ers could be fired and re­placed.

Repa­ra­tions could pro­vide T&T and the Caribbean with re­sources to strength­en health­care, ex­pand ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, sup­port re­search and make loans more ac­ces­si­ble, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Win­ston Suite has opined, as he called for a greater fo­cus on how any repa­ra­tions could be used to ad­vance the re­gion’s de­vel­op­ment.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has wel­comed the suc­cess­ful fab­ri­ca­tion and load­out of the Co­conut jack­et, a de­vel­op­ment he ex­pects to sup­port nat­ur­al gas sup­plies to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s petro­chem­i­cal and down­stream in­dus­tries.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young pressed the Gov­ern­ment for an­swers on fu­el sub­sidy pay­ments, staffing arrange­ments and li­a­bil­i­ties linked to Petrotrin as the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries’ al­lo­ca­tion came un­der ex­am­i­na­tion in Par­lia­ment.

Share­hold­ers of ANSA Mer­chant Bank yes­ter­day ap­proved a cor­po­rate re­or­gan­i­sa­tion that sup­ports plans to bring its bank­ing op­er­a­tions un­der ANSA Bank Ltd with the es­tab­lish­ment of a new fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny that trans­forms the mer­chant bank it­self in­to a non-op­er­at­ing fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny.

The Gov­ern­ment has re­moved cer­tain pow­ers from the Pres­i­dent, un­der the For­eign In­vest­ment Act, and as­signed them to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

A fash­ion busi­ness can sell a gar­ment at a seem­ing­ly at­trac­tive price and still lose mon­ey. The prob­lem may not be the de­sign, qual­i­ty or sell­ing price, but rather a fail­ure to cal­cu­late the to­tal cost of bring­ing the gar­ment from con­cept to con­sumer. For Caribbean fash­ion busi­ness­es, this is more than an ac­count­ing is­sue. It is a mat­ter of com­mer­cial sur­vival, ex­port com­pet­i­tive­ness, and the re­gion’s ca­pac­i­ty to build a sus­tain­able, glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive fash­ion in­dus­try.

Many econ­o­mists and fi­nan­cial com­men­ta­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go have in the past spo­ken about fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty leg­is­la­tion. Yet it seems that much of the coun­try has lit­tle idea what this in­volves, which helps ex­plain why an im­por­tant pro­pos­al in the 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get has at­tract­ed so lit­tle ex­am­i­na­tion.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) con­tin­ues the search for an­swers to its di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion chal­lenge, a vi­tal source of in­vest­ment re­mains un­tapped. The time has come for this coun­try to mean­ing­ful­ly en­gage with its glob­al di­as­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty and to see this group as more than a group of pa­tri­ots that pro­vide re­mit­tances or who un­der­take acts of phil­an­thropy.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s non-fi­nan­cial pub­lic sec­tor record­ed an op­er­at­ing sur­plus of $1.27 bil­lion dur­ing the first eight months of fis­cal 2026, al­most dou­bling the $662 mil­lion record­ed over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er, as im­proved cash op­er­a­tions among en­er­gy state en­ter­pris­es helped off­set weak­er bal­ances else­where in the pub­lic sec­tor.

If the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor and the Named Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cer (NPO) were a mar­riage, we would now be sit­ting in cou­ples ther­a­py. I would be on one side of the room, ex­haust­ed from car­ry­ing the weight of the re­la­tion­ship, while the Reg­u­la­tor sat on the oth­er side in­sist­ing that the rules of the house­hold were clear. The ther­a­pist would ask, “When did com­mu­ni­ca­tion break down?” My an­swer would be sim­ple: it broke down when I need­ed sup­port and was met with si­lence.