The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­cham T&T) has ap­plaud­ed the sign­ing of what it de­scribed as a ground-break­ing agree­ment to in­tro­duce the lo­cal­ly de­vel­oped e-KYC (elec­tron­ic Know Your Cus­tomer) plat­form, brand­ed No­bis, by the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T (NPIC-TT), Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT).

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has em­pha­sised that for­ti­fy­ing T&T’s cap­i­tal mar­ket is the cor­ner­stone of a sus­tain­able re­sponse to the coun­try’s press­ing fis­cal and de­mo­graph­ic chal­lenges—chief among them, the loom­ing strain on the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem (NIS).

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Lar­ry Howai, said yes­ter­day that the in­sti­tu­tion has “quite a few ini­tia­tives,” that would bring T&T clos­er to hav­ing a more eq­ui­table al­lo­ca­tion of for­eign ex­change.

Ten days af­ter Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, an­nounced a 100 per cent in­crease in the ex­cise du­ty on all cig­a­rettes, smok­ers are still buy­ing the prod­uct at pre-bud­get prices.

The Cab­i­net has ap­proved a one-year ex­ten­sion of all scrap met­al deal­er li­cences, al­low­ing op­er­a­tions to con­tin­ue un­til Oc­to­ber 14, 2026.

In his 2026 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last week Mon­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo men­tioned Re­pub­lic Bank and First Cit­i­zens twice.

The gov­ern­ment has cut $45 mil­lion from the On The Job (OJT) Train­ing Pro­gramme, how­ev­er, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter as­sures that more sus­tain­able jobs are com­ing.

Econ­o­mists Dr Ronald Ramkissoon and Tahar­qa Obi­ka are call­ing for greater clar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy in the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to fu­el pric­ing, fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s an­nounce­ment in last Mon­day’s Bud­get that the price of su­per gaso­line will be re­duced by $1 per litre.
The mea­sure, which is ex­pect­ed to cost the State ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500 mil­lion in low­er sales rev­enue, has been wel­comed by mo­torists but has al­so sparked ques­tions about long-term pol­i­cy di­rec­tion and fair­ness in fu­el pric­ing.

T&T took a ma­jor step to­ward its dig­i­tal fu­ture this week as three na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions—the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC), the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPIC-TT), and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT)—signed a land­mark agree­ment to in­tro­duce a na­tion­al elec­tron­ic Know Your Cus­tomer (eKYC) plat­form.

The 2026 na­tion­al bud­get has ear­marked $2.96 bil­lion for To­ba­go, rep­re­sent­ing five per cent of the to­tal bud­get­ed ex­pen­di­ture of $59.23 bil­lion.

Toni Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine has re­signed as pres­i­dent of NGC Green Com­pa­ny, cit­ing health rea­sons.
Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that she ini­tial­ly sub­mit­ted her res­ig­na­tion in mid-Au­gust 2025, but the board asked her to re­con­sid­er.
Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine, how­ev­er, main­tained her de­ci­sion to step back from the cor­po­rate world to fo­cus on her health.

With the Unit­ed States and Venezuela draw­ing clos­er to a mil­i­tary con­flict and T&T po­ten­tial­ly be­ing drawn in­to the mid­dle of it, there could be se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic and hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­se­quences that T&T must pre­pare for.