The com­men­tary be­low was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on April 3, 2025, and is be­ing re­pub­lished to­day as a re­sult the re­ac­tions to last week's col­umn in this space, head­lined 'Will trade unions turn against Govt?'

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Work­ers at An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd protest­ed out­side the com­pa­ny’s Laven­tille head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, as share­hold­ers gath­ered in­side for the com­pa­ny’s 44th an­nu­al meet­ing, with the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) ac­cus­ing man­age­ment of putting pro­duc­tion ahead of work­ers’ health and safe­ty.

You are an ex­pert be­cause peo­ple of­ten come run­ning to you. You are sit­ting on a gold mine and do not know how to mon­e­tise it. You scratch your head be­cause you need di­rec­tion and a path­way to take what is in your mind and turn it in­to a mar­ketable prod­uct. You know in­tan­gi­bles are chal­leng­ing to sell, but you see ev­i­dence of sim­i­lar knowl­edge pro­fes­sion­als’ suc­cess. How do I be­come a knowl­edge en­tre­pre­neur?

Ac­cess to fi­nance for growth has long been con­sid­ered a ma­jor chal­lenge for SMEs (Small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es) glob­al­ly. How­ev­er, fur­ther analy­sis sug­gests that the mind­set of SME lead­ers in­flu­ences both ac­cess to cap­i­tal and the choice of in­stru­ments used when fi­nanc­ing growth. In Trinidad & To­ba­go, as it is for many small-is­land de­vel­op­ing states, where struc­tur­al chal­lenges to growth ex­ist, the lead­er­ship mind­set is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant in de­ter­min­ing how to fi­nance SME growth.

Last week, I wrote about how peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go can con­vert TTD in­to for­eign cur­ren­cy and gain greater ac­cess to the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

For “less than the cost of an em­ploy­ee” In­tel­li­Co AI Agency Lim­it­ed has vowed to change the busi­ness land­scape of the coun­try.

The or­gan­is­er of the “Be­yond the Blue­print,” the new Caribbean Home De­sign Ex­po and trade show, be­lieves the event can trig­ger vis­i­tor ar­rivals over time

As Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­proach­es the 64th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion of­ten seems more com­fort­able cat­a­logu­ing our fail­ures than mea­sur­ing our achieve­ments. We cur­rent­ly face a num­ber of chal­lenges as nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has fall­en, parts of Point Lisas are idle, house­holds re­main on wa­ter sched­ules, roads are in a state of dis­re­pair and too many pub­lic in­vest­ments have failed to de­liv­er what was promised.

An­gos­tu­ra di­rec­tor Jen­nifer Fred­er­ick sur­vived a heat­ed chal­lenge to her re-elec­tion as a di­rec­tor of the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny yes­ter­day, with its 44th an­nu­al meet­ing ex­pos­ing a sharp di­vide be­tween mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers and in­ter­ests con­trol­ling a large por­tion of the com­pa­ny’s vot­ing pow­er.

Trinidad and To­ba­go record­ed the sixth-high­est to­tal en­er­gy sup­ply per capi­ta among coun­tries cov­ered by the En­er­gy In­sti­tute in 2025, at 358.2 gi­ga­joules (GJ) per per­son.

An­gos­tu­ra share­hold­er and mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er ad­vo­cate Pe­ter Per­me­ll is urg­ing fel­low share­hold­ers to turn out in large num­bers for to­day’s an­nu­al meet­ing and vote against the re-elec­tion of di­rec­tor Jen­nifer Fred­er­ick, while putting the com­pa­ny’s near­ly $1 bil­lion claim against CL Fi­nan­cial back un­der the spot­light.

The Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs (ML­LA) and the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) to ac­cel­er­ate the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s land-re­lat­ed sys­tems and ser­vices.