Pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Son­ji Pierre-Chase is pleased with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s em­pha­sis on press­ing is­sues such as for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, debt man­age­ment, tax re­form, and ex­port-led growth, dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2025 Mid-Year Fis­cal Re­view.

There are mixed views con­cern­ing the gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish a for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion com­mit­tee.

Hav­ing cur­rent col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments (CBAs) is vi­tal for en­sur­ing fair labour prac­tices, pro­mot­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and pre­vent­ing in­dus­tri­al un­rest.

In a show of con­cern over grow­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions that was broad in its ref­er­ence to the con­tem­po­rary “geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape” but light on de­tail, once again, for­eign min­is­ters of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) bloc re­cent­ly placed a spot­light on the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal mo­ment. They did so last month in a broad­er ef­fort to ad­vance their re­spec­tive coun­tries’ na­tion­al in­ter­ests.

San Fer­nan­do East MP and for­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning yes­ter­day ques­tioned Gov­ern­ment’s cur­rent fis­cal strate­gies and warned of broad­er eco­nom­ic fall­out.

Let us be clear. The coun­try has en­tered Kam­la II’s reign in 2025 with a bad eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal hand – a los­ing hand based on the his­tor­i­cal record.

At the end of last week’s BG View com­men­tary, which was head­lined, "Will Kam­la ex­pose 'forex dis­tri­b­u­tion car­tel’?" some as­pects of the Ex­change Con­trol Act were quot­ed, per­ti­nent to the abil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to de­ter­mine the arrange­ments by which for­eign ex­change in T&T is bought and sold.

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice has not­ed a slight dip in the in­fla­tion rate, ac­cord­ing to the Con­sumer Price In­dex for the month of May 2025.

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) Vivek Char­ran is hop­ing the new gov­ern­ment will find a bet­ter bal­ance in terms of for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion.

Guardian Me­dia has been re­li­ably in­formed that the di­rec­tors are at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, Ram­nar­ine Be­dasie, Naz­im Sar­jad, Dr Ram­per­sad Moti­lal, Saman­tha Su­ru­jbal­ly, Dar­ren Mitchell, and Dr Ah­mad Khan.

Crime has reached “cri­sis lev­els” in T&T, not on­ly af­fect­ing the gen­er­al busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in a neg­a­tive way, but al­so im­pact­ing core in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues, ac­cord­ing to the Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA).

Wise­ly us­ing waste has long been a strat­e­gy em­ployed by Louisea John-Browne, but her dri­ve has led her on­to the path of bur­geon­ing busi­ness.