Eight months in­to the term of a new ad­min­is­tra­tion and on the cusp of a new cal­en­dar year, T&T’s eco­nom­ic nar­ra­tive is de­fined by three con­verg­ing themes: limp growth, for­eign ex­change con­straints and a wa­ver­ing en­er­gy out­look.

Navin Dook­er­an, CEO of the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ex­im­Bank), was yes­ter­day ter­mi­nat­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, Guardian Me­dia has learned. No of­fi­cial rea­son for his sud­den de­par­ture was pro­vid­ed.

Flow Trinidad has no­ti­fied its cus­tomers that it will be up­dat­ing its ca­ble tele­vi­sion line­up in light of re­cent­ly is­sued guide­lines by Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT).

ANSA McAL, and one of its sub­sidiaries, have emerged vic­to­ri­ous in a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar le­gal bat­tle with the Ger­man ship­ping gi­ant Ha­pag-Lloyd AG over a ship­ment of chem­i­cals which spilled af­ter leav­ing T&T.

Di­ver­si­fied, pub­licly list­ed Agos­ti­ni said yes­ter­day that the com­pa­ny does not dom­i­nate the pro­cure­ment of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for the pub­lic sec­tor or the lo­cal phar­ma­cy sec­tor.

Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) pres­i­dent Fazir Khan has cau­tioned against fram­ing the con­struc­tion sec­tor’s cur­rent slow­down as a melt­down trig­gered by any sin­gle com­pa­ny, in­sist­ing the pres­sures now sur­fac­ing are the re­sult of long-stand­ing struc­tur­al prob­lems for which in­dus­try lead­ers should have an­tic­i­pat­ed and planned.

Well com­ple­tion is the crit­i­cal fi­nal phase of oil and gas op­er­a­tions that pre­pares a new­ly drilled well for ser­vice. It is es­sen­tial for eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty, as it en­sures the safe and ef­fi­cient con­trol and flow of hy­dro­car­bons from the reser­voir to the sur­face.

Through­out his­to­ry, the struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion of so­ci­eties has de­pend­ed on am­bi­tious pro­grammes of pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment. The chal­lenge is that the glob­al track record has not been good in project se­lec­tion and ex­e­cu­tion. T&T has its fair share of aban­doned or sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­layed and over­bud­get projects over the last 25 years which in­clude: the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Wa­ter­front Project, Tamana In­tec Park, Beetham Waste­water Project, Cou­va Med­ical Fa­cil­i­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty Of The West In­dies South Cam­pus (Pe­nal/Debe), Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty, Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal, Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion, Shi­va Boys’ & Par­vati Girls’ Hin­du Col­leges (Pe­nal), Ca­roni fu­el fa­cil­i­ty, Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, Red House re­fur­bish­ment, Solomon Ho­choy high­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin and the Pres­i­dent’s Cot­tage.

Long-serv­ing cruise agent Charles Car­val­ho is re­ject­ing sug­ges­tions that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cruise sea­son is fac­ing any wide­spread col­lapse in book­ings, warn­ing that ex­ag­ger­at­ed com­men­tary risks dam­ag­ing the coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion in a sec­tor that de­pends heav­i­ly on con­fi­dence and glob­al per­cep­tion.

First Cit­i­zens yes­ter­day an­nounced that it has rolled out Google Pay in T&T, mak­ing this the first time the mo­bile pay­ment ser­vice is avail­able lo­cal­ly.

Last Thurs­day, my col­umn was pub­lished un­der the head­line, “Are evil forces con­spir­ing to crash Re­pub­lic Bank?” and hope­ful­ly, most of the peo­ple who read that com­men­tary be­yond the head­line ap­pre­ci­ate that there is sig­nif­i­cant un­ease about Cor­po­ra­tion Sole nom­i­nat­ing a ma­jor­i­ty of the di­rec­tors to the board of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL).

On No­vem­ber 30 2022, a sim­ple so­cial me­dia post in­vit­ed peo­ple to in­ter­act with an AI chat­bot. It marked the day that Ope­nAI re­leased Chat­G­PT to the pub­lic. In five days, the chat­bot gained one mil­lion users and crossed 100 mil­lion with­in two months, mak­ing it the fastest adopt­ed con­sumer ap­pli­ca­tion in his­to­ry.