T&T’s health­care sys­tem has been giv­en a shot in the arm as the coun­try will re­ceive from the CAF—De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca a loan of $$340 mil­lion (US$50) to mit­i­gate the COVID-19 health cri­sis here.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s (IMF) has pro­ject­ed that T&T’s econ­o­my will con­tract by 4.5 per cent for 2020.

This is how some lo­cal im­porters and dis­trib­u­tors have de­scribed the de­ci­sion by Smith­field Foods to idle its Sioux Falls, South Dako­ta, pork-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

BPTT has not had any dis­rup­tion to its sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas even though it has been forced to make changes to its op­er­a­tions ac­cord­ing to its Re­gion­al Pres­i­dent, Claire Fitz­patrick.

Uni­com­er (Trinidad) Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of Courts, has col­lab­o­rat­ed with its sup­pli­ers to pro­cure, do­nat­ed and de­liv­er fur­nish­ings and sup­plies to the 50-bed Step­down Fa­cil­i­ty at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua.

Aus­tralian out­fit BHP T&T has an­nounced that it will con­tribute of 3.35 mil­lion dol­lars to the ef­fort to tack­le COVID-19 in T&T.

In a sur­vey of the Am­cham T&T mem­ber­ship con­duct­ed over a two-week pe­ri­od be­fore and af­ter the of­fi­cial stay at home or­der made by gov­ern­ment the sur­vey showed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3000 jobs across the 102 com­pa­nies could be at risk over the next 6 to 12 months due to COVID-19 re­lat­ed mea­sures. The ma­jor­i­ty of those jobs at risk were re­port­ed by com­pa­nies that have less than 25 em­ploy­ees on their pay­roll.

The T&T gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive just over $1 bil­lion from the CAF-de­vel­op­ment bank of Latin Amer­i­ca as it grap­ples with the eco­nom­ic fall out from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The Min­ster of Trade, Com­merce and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon has ex­pressed that the gov­ern­ment is in­tent­ly study­ing ways in which busi­ness­es in the coun­try can restart their op­er­a­tions.

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Goopee-Scoon has promised the joint cham­bers that their pro­pos­als for fur­ther re­lief from the gov­ern­ment in light of the COVID-19 cri­sis will be dis­cussed with mem­bers of Cab­i­net and a de­ci­sion made on a way for­ward.

The Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO), of the Trinidad Ho­tels, Restau­rants & Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (THRTA), Bri­an Fron­tin does not be­lieve that the in­ci­dent with D’Orig­i­nal Sauce Dou­bles (Sauce) over the past week­end played a role in the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to shut down restau­rants.

Leti­tia Teles­ford, Pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral Fi­nance Fa­cil­i­ty (CFF) is urg­ing cred­it unions to work to­geth­er for the ben­e­fit of the wider mem­ber­ship.