This week we wit­nessed two de­ci­sions that demon­strate the pos­si­bil­i­ties and the chal­lenges of unit­ing the Caribbean peo­ple.

The Cen­tral Bank has de­cid­ed that it will main­tain the re­po rate at 3.5 per cent not­ing that there is ex­cess re­serves reach­ing over $10 bil­lion in mid-June 2020. The bank said there is lit­tle in­di­ca­tion there has yet been a sig­nif­i­cant pick­up in pri­vate sec­tor cred­it as busi­ness­es await a re­cov­ery in de­mand.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) has launched an App which can be used to iden­ti­fy con­sumers’ en­er­gy use of every­day ap­pli­ances.

The “biggest road­block” to the in­vest­ment in re­new­able en­er­gy projects in the Caribbean are the in­vestor reg­u­la­tions that are in place, Mar­tin Vogt, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ger­man in­vest­ment and as­set man­age­ment com­pa­ny MPC Cap­i­tal has said.

The pop­u­la­tion size of T&T and Es­to­nia (1.3 mil­lion) is ap­prox­i­mate­ly the same, but the two coun­tries dif­fer when it comes to the ease of do­ing busi­ness—with T&T be­ing ranked 105th and Es­to­nia at 18th.

bmo­bile has an­nounced an up­grade for its cus­tomers and has in­vit­ed mo­bile phone own­ers who are not part of its net­work to try it for thir­ty days for free.

Twen­ty-four ad­di­tion­al high-end rooms would be added to To­ba­go’s room stock by the end of this year. The as­sur­ance comes as the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has promised to re­fur­bish the Man­ta Lodge at Spey­side. Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly An­cil Den­nis made the an­nounce­ment at this week’s vir­tu­al post ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil me­dia brief­ing.

Two ma­jor so­lar projects that will gen­er­ate so­lar en­er­gy in this coun­try at a cost on par with cur­rent elec­tric­i­ty prices have been an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) has pro­ject­ed that the Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean re­gion would ex­pe­ri­ence a deep de­cline in their economies this year with an av­er­age fall of -9.4 per cent.

The Cen­tral Bank’s 2019 Fi­nan­cial Sta­bil­i­ty Re­port has warned that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has the po­ten­tial to im­pact the fi­nan­cial sec­tor through chan­nels and at trans­mis­sion speeds not pre­vi­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed.

If you spend time at the pok­er ta­ble or the slot ma­chines, pre­pare to en­ter a whole new world.

Fi­nance Sec­re­tary for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Joel Jack pre­sent­ed on Mon­day, what is now his eighth con­sec­u­tive bud­get.