As the mid-year bud­get re­view ap­proach­es busi­ness cham­ber heads would like to see the for­eign ex­change ac­cess dif­fi­cul­ties, ease of do­ing busi­ness, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strate­gies as well as crime and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, be at the fore­front.

Mil­lions of dol­lars in pub­lic funds could be saved through the adop­tion of dig­i­tal con­struc­tion strate­gies.

As T&T con­tin­ues to bat­tle the forex crunch which con­tin­ues to af­fect busi­ness­es and or­di­nary cit­i­zens, two econ­o­mists are rec­om­mend­ing that Gov­ern­ment—in its mid year bud­get re­view—take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion im­ple­ment­ing a “man­aged float” go­ing for­ward.

Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $340 mil­lion for the six months end­ed April 30 2025.  

The Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go said yes­ter­day it did not stop the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al from au­dit­ing the ac­counts of the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tor.

The Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Fi­nanc­ing for De­vel­op­ment (FFD4) from June 30 to Ju­ly 3, in Spain, ar­rives at a mo­ment of reck­on­ing.

That fact was dis­closed by the Cen­tral Bank on Fri­day, in re­sponse to a re­quest for in­for­ma­tion from the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tor and the Gov­ern­ment’s banker to com­ments by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last Thurs­day. She said that for a sec­ond year the Cen­tral Bank did not co­op­er­ate with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­quest for in­for­ma­tion.

Just about a week af­ter Shell con­firmed it had tak­en a Fi­nal In­vest­ment De­ci­sion (FID) on the Aphrodite project, Sub­sea7 has an­nounced that the com­pa­ny has been award­ed a size­able con­tract by Shell for the un­de­vel­oped nat­ur­al gas field in the East Coast Ma­rine Area (EC­MA) in T&T.

Pri­vate sec­tor health­care provider, Med­corp, and leg­endary bats­man Bri­an Lara yes­ter­day said the name of The Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre has not changed.

While the Health Min­istry con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the new COVID vari­ant which has not yet reached lo­cal shores, but has been de­tect­ed in coun­tries vis­it­ed by lo­cals, econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon is warn­ing there can be an eco­nom­ic fall­out should the virus reach T&T.

Two months on from “Lib­er­a­tion Day”, and it is ev­i­dent that the volatil­i­ty and un­cer­tain­ty in mar­kets since the turn of the year is more like­ly to con­tin­ue than not. The month of April brought world­wide fear and pan­ic as the US im­posed sig­nif­i­cant tar­iffs on im­ports from coun­tries around the world, notwith­stand­ing the ex­is­tence of trade agree­ments with those coun­tries. Chi­na, Cana­da and Mex­i­co, were amongst the most sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed, with Chi­na in par­tic­u­lar re­spond­ing by im­pos­ing re­tal­ia­to­ry tar­iffs.

The fall­out fol­low­ing the fi­as­co that turned out to be the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val has left many with­in the en­ter­tain­ment fra­ter­ni­ty en­gag­ing in some re­flec­tion.