There is an ur­gent need for strate­gic over­sight in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean con­cern­ing the adop­tion of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI). To ad­dress this, Pro­fes­sor Renée Cum­mings is prepar­ing GOV­ERN™, an ex­ec­u­tive blue­print for lead­ing con­fi­dent­ly, gov­ern­ing re­spon­si­bly and thriv­ing in the age of AI.

The Cen­tral Bank of T&T has held its bench­mark re­po rate steady at 3.50 per cent, cit­ing low do­mes­tic in­fla­tion along­side mount­ing glob­al un­cer­tain­ty linked to geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and ris­ing com­mod­i­ty prices.

Busi­ness process out­sourc­ing com­pa­ny Bill Gosling Out­sourc­ing (BGO) has deep­ened its in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go with the open­ing of a new pur­pose-built of­fice in Trinci­ty, bring­ing 200 jobs to east Trinidad and sig­nalling plans for fur­ther ex­pan­sion.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) re­quest for a record $4.12 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for fis­cal 2027 is be­ing met with a mix of con­cern, frus­tra­tion and calls for greater ac­count­abil­i­ty from stake­hold­ers, farm­ers and econ­o­mists who ar­gue that high­er fund­ing re­quests must be matched by tan­gi­ble re­sults on the ground.

Venezuela’s un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that there was a sec­ond ma­jor oil spill em­a­nat­ing from Trinidad wa­ters is ev­i­dence that re­la­tions be­tween Venezuela and T&T re­main frosty and there are dire se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of this.

Twice this month, this col­umn has ad­dressed the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s use of se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment process­es to se­lect con­trac­tors for ma­jor hous­ing projects in Trinidad. The is­sue was high­light­ed on June 4 un­der the head­line Who will ben­e­fit from the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion projects? and on June 11, with the head­line, Will the OPR do the right thing? Both of those com­men­taries looked at the pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions made by State en­ti­ties, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd.

Shell said yes­ter­day that re­cent se­nior va­can­cies that have been pub­licly ad­ver­tised are not con­nect­ed to the Man­a­tee project.

In a re­cent con­ver­sa­tion with a col­league, he lament­ed the state of con­fu­sion in an or­gan­i­sa­tion he is as­so­ci­at­ed with. The dis­cus­sion that en­sued led to a deep­er con­ver­sa­tion about “commess” and how it ad­verse­ly af­fects or­gan­i­sa­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T). The word commess, root­ed in the French-cre­ole lan­guage and pri­mar­i­ly used in T&T, is as­so­ci­at­ed with con­fu­sion, gos­sip, chaos, scan­dal, in­fight­ing and dis­or­der.

For near­ly two decades, Port-of-Spain has en­dured se­vere flood­ing that halts busi­ness, par­a­lyzes trans­porta­tion, and in­flicts mil­lions in loss­es with alarm­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty. The cat­a­stroph­ic floods of No­vem­ber 2008 and No­vem­ber 2011 were clear warn­ings — yet they were some­what un­heed­ed.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, does not be­lieve the State of Emer­gency (SoE) has dis­rupt­ed busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Agos­ti­ni Group Ltd has for­mal­ly closed its takeover bid for Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd af­ter se­cur­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 96.8 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s is­sued and out­stand­ing shares, po­si­tion­ing the con­glom­er­ate to take con­trol of the restau­rant and food ser­vices op­er­a­tor.

A Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing signed be­tween the Unit­ed States and Iran last week has giv­en the glob­al avi­a­tion in­dus­try its first re­al sense of op­ti­mism in over 100 days.