This is the fifth edi­tion of a sev­en-part se­ries fea­tur­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents pro­vid­ing their thoughts on En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, and Gov­er­nance (ESG) is­sues as part of the HAR­CON Na­tion­al Youth Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG Pi­lot Project

TCL Group’s Ja­maican sub­sidiary, Caribbean Ce­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (CC­CL) has suc­cess­ful­ly com­mis­sioned its US$42 mil­lion de­bot­tle­neck project at its Rock­fort fa­cil­i­ty in East Kingston. 

In the past two months, sev­er­al no­table car brands such as Mi­ni (Ace­man), BYD (Shark), Pro­ton (eMas7) and even roll-on, roll off deal­er HSM Mar­ket­ing (Rid­dara RD6) have in­tro­duced new elec­tric and hy­brid ve­hi­cle mod­els to the mar­ket.

Pri­vate health­care provider, Med­corp, said last night that its Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (IPO) of 350,000 or­di­nary shares at $48 a share was ful­ly sub­scribed and raised the $16.8 mil­lion ex­pect­ed.

There has been a drop in car loans but an in­crease in bor­row­ing for re­al es­tate in­vest­ments ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank’s Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee (MPC).

Lar­ry Howai is one of the peo­ple in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor who I hold in high re­gard, hav­ing re­port­ed on him since his ap­point­ment as the CEO of the First Cit­i­zens Group in 1997 and dur­ing his ser­vice as min­is­ter of fi­nance and the econ­o­my from Ju­ly 2012 to Sep­tem­ber 2015.

In a dis­clo­sure dur­ing T&T’s 2025 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view last Wednes­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie re­vealed a $200 mil­lion “black hole” in le­gal fees with­in his min­istry—a rev­e­la­tion that has ig­nit­ed con­cerns over fis­cal dis­ci­pline, pro­cure­ment prac­tices and the broad­er cul­ture of ac­count­abil­i­ty in pub­lic fi­nance.

A cou­ple events oc­curred last week, which are very much re­lat­ed, but on face val­ue may not seem to be. Last Wednes­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo pre­sent­ed his mid year bud­get re­view. The fol­low­ing day, a pub­lic hol­i­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar stood shoul­der to shoul­der with trade union lead­ers at the Labour Day plat­form in Fyz­abad.

Ear­li­er this year, I met a young grad­u­ate who had spent the en­tire sum­mer search­ing for a job that matched her ed­u­ca­tion—with­out suc­cess. As the weeks passed and her op­tions nar­rowed, she ap­plied to a lo­cal meat shop, hop­ing to find some form of em­ploy­ment. But even there, she was turned away—she was “overqual­i­fied” to pack chick­en legs.

Cus­tomers are irate with Trin­ba­go Ex­press T&T Ltd as they have not re­ceived their bar­rels from as far back as No­vem­ber 2024, while some have since sought le­gal ac­tion. 

SME en­tre­pre­neurs face nu­mer­ous chal­lenges in build­ing a suc­cess­ful en­ter­prise, and one of them stands out from the crowd. An un­known brand is one ob­sta­cle to scal­ing the busi­ness. How do you, as an en­tre­pre­neur, craft a brand strat­e­gy and break out from your mar­ket­ing Al­ca­traz?

The Green Fund is an of­ten-over­looked as­set in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It has been qui­et­ly ac­cu­mu­lat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of funds and is rarely ever tapped. At present, the fund con­tains over $11 bil­lion, but on­ly around $326 mil­lion has ever been dis­bursed in 16 years. This da­ta was re­cent­ly re­leased with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port 2024.