Japan­ese Am­bas­sador to T&T Aki­ma Umeza­wa says while T&T and Japan have long en­joyed ben­e­fi­cial trade re­la­tions, re­cent geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions can open more op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal ex­ports.

On Feb­ru­ary 3rd, 2026, it was an­nounced that the overn­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go (‘T&T’) and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates signed an Agree­ment for the Pro­mo­tion and Rec­i­p­ro­cal Pro­tec­tion of In­vest­ment. Though wel­come news, it is wor­thy to bear in mind that this agree­ment is but one of many which af­ford var­i­ous ben­e­fits to T&T in­vestors. In this mul­ti-part se­ries, we dis­cuss the var­i­ous in­vest­ment pro­tec­tion agree­ments (al­so com­mon­ly re­ferred to as bi­lat­er­al in­vest­ment treaties) to which T&T is par­ty and pro­vide a high-lev­el overview of some of the key pro­vi­sions of such agree­ments, in­clud­ing the rights and ben­e­fits avail­able to T&T in­vestors.

oDe­liv­er’s busi­ness, which be­gan five years ago, is al­ready gen­er­at­ing prof­it from its core op­er­a­tions, even as it push­es ag­gres­sive­ly in­to faster, on-de­mand de­liv­ery, a bal­anc­ing act its lead­er­ship in­sists is de­lib­er­ate, not ac­ci­den­tal.

In a call to dis­man­tle the ar­cha­ic ar­chi­tec­tures of cor­po­rate pow­er, Ja­son Cum­mings, vice-pres­i­dent fi­nanc­ing/head of Caribbean fi­nan­cial ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at RBC Mer­chant Bank (Caribbean) Ltd, opened a di­a­logue on the fu­ture of lead­er­ship dur­ing an In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day 2026 fo­rum at the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness on Fri­day.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s net of­fi­cial for­eign re­serves to­talled US$5.580 bil­lion at the end of Feb­ru­ary 2026, a de­crease of US$135 mil­lion or 2.36 per cent from Jan­u­ary 2026, when the re­serves amount­ed to US$5.715 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Bank web­site.

Fol­low­ing its strate­gic ac­qui­si­tion of a 50 per cent stake in the Bar­ba­di­an dis­tri­b­u­tion pow­er­house Arm­strong Agen­cies at the end of 2025, AS Bry­den and Sons Hold­ings Ltd has so­lid­i­fied its trans­for­ma­tion in­to a re­gion­al ti­tan.

Dr Priya Mara­jh has been se­lect­ed as the in­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T, step­ping in­to the role as the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­gins a lead­er­ship tran­si­tion fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of long-serv­ing pres­i­dent and CEO Dr Thack­wray Dri­ver.

Un­der­scor­ing its com­mit­ment to "In­spir­ing Bet­ter Choic­es for a Bet­ter World," the ANSA McAL Group has an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Melanie Richards as head of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and so­cial in­vest­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has point­ed to what she de­scribed as “strong signs of growth” in the en­er­gy sec­tor, cit­ing ex­pect­ed in­creas­es in gas pro­duc­tion from ma­jor up­stream projects over the next two years.

With ex­ports ac­count­ing for more than 75 per cent of to­tal sales and ship­ments reach­ing about 25 coun­tries, KC Con­fec­tionery con­tin­ues to po­si­tion it­self as a steady for­eign ex­change earn­er for T&T, even as do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic con­di­tions fluc­tu­ate.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance (MOF), through the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD), will shift to a ful­ly dig­i­tal sys­tem for fil­ing Amuse­ment Gam­ing Tax re­turns from April 1.

Last week’s com­men­tary in this space, which was head­lined, 'How should re­tirees in­vest their life sav­ings?' start­ed off with a chance en­counter with a re­tired pub­lic ser­vant at the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park, ad­dressed some de­mo­graph­ic is­sues re­lat­ed to the pay­ment of Na­tion­al In­sur­ance pen­sions, and then looked at a com­men­tary writ­ten by Bourse Se­cu­ri­ties, head­lined ‘Is con­ser­v­a­tive in­vest­ing right for you?’and pub­lished in the T&T Guardian on Ju­ly 28, 2025.