With Eman­ci­pa­tion Day just past, imag­ine an is­land with a church, a ceme­tery and chil­dren run­ning be­neath co­conut trees. Fam­i­lies have lived there for gen­er­a­tions and their dead lie with­in earshot of the sea. Then, in dis­tant cap­i­tals, men un­fold a map and de­cide that the is­land is strate­gi­cal­ly in­dis­pens­able. Its peo­ple are told, per­haps not in words, but un­mis­tak­ably in pol­i­cy, that their homes ob­struct se­cu­ri­ty, their his­to­ry can be fold­ed in­to a suit­case, and their be­long­ings mat­ter less than a mil­i­tary base.

The open­ing of Pen­ny­wise’s newest and largest re­tail lo­ca­tion at Pen­ny­wise Plaza at the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate has be­come an­oth­er sig­nal that busi­ness­es are re­gain­ing con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said yes­ter­day.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) gen­er­at­ed $1.52 bil­lion in prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2026, as the re­gion­al bank­ing group con­tin­ued to grow earn­ings de­spite glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty.

The yacht­ing sec­tor is step­ping up its dri­ve to at­tract ex­port-ori­ent­ed in­vest­ment, with a new elec­tron­ic clear­ance sys­tem.

Con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion be­tween le­gal no­tices and in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion codes led to last’s week’s sud­den re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the mild hy­brids.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) ex­ports to re­gion­al mar­kets edged high­er in 2025, reach­ing 10.7 bil­lion cu­bic me­tres (bcm). The in­crease fol­lowed two con­sec­u­tive years of low­er ex­port vol­umes and re­flect­ed a mod­est re­cov­ery in do­mes­tic LNG pro­duc­tion, even as com­pe­ti­tion in the glob­al mar­ket con­tin­ued to in­ten­si­fy.

Last week, I ex­plained eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion through in­vest­ment port­fo­lio con­struc­tion. The point was pro­duc­ing oil, nat­ur­al gas, LNG, am­mo­nia and methanol does give Trinidad and To­ba­go sev­er­al sources of in­come. How­ev­er, these ma­jor eco­nom­ic en­gines re­main tied to gas avail­abil­i­ty, com­mod­i­ty prices and the same glob­al in­dus­tri­al cy­cle, which means we are chang­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties in the port­fo­lio with­out chang­ing enough of what can cause it to fall. That is why we re­main locked in a boom-bust cy­cle.

Wi­Pay chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ald­wyn Wayne has re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that his com­pa­ny mis­han­dled Gov­ern­ment funds or was re­spon­si­ble for the re­port­ed fail­ure of the on­line fixed penal­ty no­tice pay­ment sys­tem, in­sist­ing that Wi­Pay nei­ther re­ceives nor holds pub­lic mon­ey.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go faces a grow­ing risk of a cred­it rat­ing down­grade, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment is down­play­ing con­cerns raised by Stan­dard & Poor’s (S&P) and fail­ing to ad­dress deep­er weak­ness­es in the econ­o­my.

For decades, the Caribbean has re­lied on tourism, en­er­gy, fi­nan­cial ser­vices and mi­gra­tion as path­ways to eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty.

En­tre­pre­neur­ship is of­ten pre­sent­ed as a race. Start the busi­ness, build the brand, at­tract cus­tomers, make mon­ey and scale, prefer­ably be­fore every­one on so­cial me­dia be­gins ask­ing why you are not yet a mil­lion­aire.

While Trinidad and To­ba­go’s elec­tion to a seat on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UN­SC) will bring the coun­try pos­i­tive ex­po­sure, it may not nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to im­me­di­ate greater for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) in­to the coun­try.