Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) yes­ter­day an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Richard S. Sam­my as group pres­i­dent and CEO of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group and pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, is warn­ing that em­ploy­ment loss­es in the bar and restau­rant sec­tor are an im­por­tant sig­nal, as he re­spond­ed to re­ports of mul­ti­ple clo­sures in the leisure.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) yes­ter­day called for a phased ap­proach to the in­crease in the price of nat­ur­al gas to light man­u­fac­tur­ers, warn­ing that ris­ing costs for man­u­fac­tur­ers could have neg­a­tive knock-on ef­fects for con­sumers and ex­ports.

Much of the fo­cus at this week’s en­er­gy con­fer­ence was fixed on the po­ten­tial re­turns from oil and gas projects.

At the 2025 T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, then Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed that T&T, is “seek­ing to de­lin­eate the out­er lim­its of the coun­try’s con­ti­nen­tal shelf, be­yond 200 nau­ti­cal miles”, with the prac­ti­cal ob­jec­tive of be­ing “in a po­si­tion to ex­ploit the nat­ur­al re­sources” on that ex­tend­ed por­tion. The state­ment crys­tallised a strate­gic ini­tia­tive that has been qui­et­ly ad­vanc­ing through Unit­ed Na­tions process­es since 2009, but which now car­ries im­pli­ca­tions far be­yond the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of seabed ju­ris­dic­tion.

Peren­co’s trans­for­ma­tion in­to one of T&T’s largest en­er­gy pro­duc­ers did not hap­pen overnight. It un­fold­ed through a de­lib­er­ate, decade-long con­sol­i­da­tion strat­e­gy that turned ma­ture, of­ten over­looked as­sets in­to a uni­fied pro­duc­tion sys­tem with na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance.

Lo­cal busi­ness­es sup­port­ing T&T’s back­bone oil and gas sec­tor are warn­ing of a “crip­pling ef­fect” on op­er­a­tions as the coun­try’s per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­age shifts from a mar­ket chal­lenge to a sys­tem-wide con­straint.

Com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es in T&T need to de­vel­op more skills in de­vel­op­ing a plan to deal with the fall­out from ran­somware at­tacks and oth­er cy­ber­crimes.

The Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (PPR­BA) has ex­pressed grave con­cern over com­ments made last week by Fair Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Be­van Nar­i­nesingh re­gard­ing the Com­mis­sion’s ca­pac­i­ty to en­force com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tions. Nar­i­nesingh told the me­dia that the FTC’s en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties had been con­strained by the ab­sence of a board for the past eight months.

PANA­MA CITY–Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says leg­is­la­tion to make pri­vate pen­sions tax free has been draft­ed and is now be­fore Cab­i­net, with the mea­sure ex­pect­ed to be in­clud­ed in a Fi­nance Bill due for Par­lia­ment by late Feb­ru­ary or ear­ly March.

HA­VANA (AP) — It’s al­most noon in Ha­vana when a hand­ful of tourists tum­ble out of a small yel­low bus and rush to­ward a row of shiny clas­sic cars, cam­eras in hand.

Guyana says re­al eco­nom­ic growth is ex­pect­ed to re­main strong with the oil and gas sec­tor con­tin­u­ing to be the main dri­ver of over­all growth, sup­port­ed by sus­tained dy­namism in the broad­er non-oil econ­o­my.