The JMMB Group will launch its small and medi­um en­ter­prise unit this month to pro­vide busi­ness plan­ning, fi­nan­cial ad­vice, and tar­get­ed so­lu­tions to fa­cil­i­tate the growth and ex­pan­sion of small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs).

The CARI­COM Chair and Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter, Mia Mot­t­ley, has ex­pressed that in the midst of COVID-19, some small is­land de­vel­op­ing states will suc­cess­ful­ly re-en­gi­neer their economies, while some will col­lapse there­by hav­ing a rip­ple ef­fect on the na­tion and world.

Latin Amer­i­ca’s in­trare­gion­al trade is be­ing more af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 cri­sis than its ex­ports to the rest of the world.

“Al­though the T&T econ­o­my has achieved very high growth rates it has nev­er been able to do so over a sus­tained pe­ri­od. In fact, giv­en that the econ­o­my is still dom­i­nat­ed by the en­er­gy sec­tor, shocks in this sec­tor have a dra­mat­ic im­pact on the en­tire econ­o­my —par­tic­u­lar­ly, ex­ports, gov­ern­ment rev­enue and ul­ti­mate­ly growth. The eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy must there­fore ad­dress this fun­da­men­tal is­sue: the need for the de­vel­op­ment of oth­er growth cen­tres, to achieve a broad-based econ­o­my where the struc­ture of pro­duc­tion is more bal­anced and where the coun­try is to some ex­tent in­su­lat­ed from eco­nom­ic shocks gen­er­al­ly from out­side.”

T&T will be re-as­sessed soon by the Do­ing Busi­ness arm of the World Bank to de­ter­mine if the coun­try has seen im­prove­ment in the Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness in­di­ca­tors.

Dig­i­cel has filed for bank­rupt­cy in Bermu­da but is in­sist­ing that it is busi­ness as usu­al.

“I was ex­cit­ed. I was turn­ing a new page in my life and I was very hope­ful about what was to come,” Saman­tha, 35, told Guardian Me­dia.

While com­pa­nies around the world have been suf­fer­ing fi­nan­cial­ly as a re­sult of COVID-19, the GraceKennedy Group has record­ed its best re­sults in re­cent times.

For the first quar­ter of 2020 Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL Lim­it­ed (TTNGL) record­ed an af­ter tax prof­it of $6.9 mil­lion. This rep­re­sents an 85 per cent slide from the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2019 of $45.8 mil­lion.

The re­stric­tions on move­ment and do­ing busi­ness are be­ing lift­ed in phas­es over the next few weeks. If you have been read­ing my columns and tak­ing ac­tion you should have de­cid­ed on your re­sponse to a phys­i­cal­ly dis­tanced world—de­liv­ery on­ly restau­rants, lim­its on group sizes, more on­line com­merce. I hope that you have al­so tak­en the time to com­plete a more in depth analy­sis of your busi­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly its pur­pose.

To­ba­go has been re­tained as a des­ti­na­tion on Vir­gin At­lantic’s 2021 sum­mer sched­ule but this time the flights will em­anate and con­clude at Lon­don’s Heathrow Air­port. This was an­nounced in a re­cent re­lease by the air­line.

Now that we are clear on where I stand let us al­so be clear that there are el­e­ments of those out­comes that we face every day that we can con­trol and there are el­e­ments that are en­tire­ly out­side of our con­trol. Yet every day all of us man­age the risks be­tween what we can con­trol and what we can­not con­trol and do so nor­mal­ly. It is part of life. We do not fear this and for many we re­ly on faith when cir­cum­stances get the bet­ter of us.