Lo­cal ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er, Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) con­tin­ues to sup­port the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in the fight against COVID-19 with the com­pa­ny’s most re­cent do­na­tion of 30,000 KN95 face masks to the Min­istry of Health, for use by front­line work­ers in the health sec­tor.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has fast-tracked dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for most busi­ness­es and it was no dif­fer­ent for the T&TEC as they had to work out how to main­tain op­er­a­tions safe­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of AM­CHAM (Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T) Ni­rad Tewarie is rec­om­mend­ing ac­cel­er­at­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box as an­nounced by the Cen­tral Bank.

Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd launched its new on­line bank­ing plat­form yes­ter­day, but it was not with­out teething prob­lems, as sev­er­al cus­tomers took to so­cial me­dia to com­plain about is­sues us­ing it.

The first round of cred­it union em­ploy­ees is ex­pect­ed to be vac­ci­nat­ed this week, vice pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral Fi­nance Fa­cil­i­ty Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety of T&T (CFF)Lyn­don By­er be­lieves.

With the lock­downs im­posed on restau­rants and food places be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd had to in­clude a pro­vi­sion of $2.2 mil­lion for in­ven­to­ry that has ex­pired or is ex­pect­ed to ex­pire be­fore they are even­tu­al­ly al­lowed to re­open, chair­man Chris­t­ian E. Mout­tet has stat­ed.

Small and medi­um size busi­ness­es (SMEs) con­tin­ue to face se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, and in some cas­es are on the verge of col­laps­ing or have al­ready col­lapsed, says the T&T As­so­ci­a­tion of Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (TTASME).

In its con­tin­ued ef­forts to fu­el small busi­ness growth and sup­port na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, Re­pub­lic Bank (Grena­da), is con­stant­ly seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pand its port­fo­lio of prod­ucts and ser­vices to meet the needs of the com­mu­ni­ties it serves.

Lil­ia Bu­run­ci­uc, the new World Bank Coun­try Di­rec­tor for the Caribbean has said that eco­nom­i­cal­ly, Caribbean small states de­pen­dent on tourism have been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly im­pact­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Arun Ku­mar Sahu says Caribbean busi­ness­es should try to reach be­yond their com­fort zones of do­ing busi­ness with North Amer­i­ca or Eu­rope, not­ing that In­dia is one of the largest grow­ing economies glob­al­ly.

Pro­man has fi­nalised an agree­ment to build two ad­di­tion­al 49,900dwt methanol dual-fu­el MR tankers, bring­ing its to­tal in­vest­ment in methanol-pow­ered ves­sels to six new­build­ings.

The Sco­tia Caribbean In­come Fund Inc with­stood a loss in val­ue, end­ing the year with a Net As­set Val­ue (NAV) of US$146.92 mil­lion as at March 31, 2020.