Busi­ness clo­sures are mount­ing, and con­cerns are ris­ing that there are grow­ing signs the econ­o­my is trend­ing down­ward.

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs has warned that en­er­gy volatil­i­ty, tight­en­ing for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, fis­cal con­straints and es­ca­lat­ing ex­ter­nal shocks are con­verg­ing in­to what she de­scribed as a “per­fect storm” for busi­ness­es and house­holds, un­der­scor­ing the need for da­ta-dri­ven de­ci­sion-mak­ing and long-term struc­tur­al re­form.

The Ba­hamas gov­ern­ment says it will re­move all val­ue added tax (VAT) on foods cur­rent­ly at­tract­ing a five per cent VAT.

In March 2025, the Cen­tral Bank of T&T be­gan is­su­ing its Eco­nom­ic Dat­a­Pack, which re­placed its Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin and Sum­ma­ry Eco­nom­ic In­di­ca­tors Bul­letin. The Dat­a­Pack is pub­lished quar­ter­ly along with the Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy An­nounce­ment and the ini­tia­tive forms part of the Bank’s on­go­ing ef­forts to im­prove the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and use­ful­ness of eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial da­ta sets.

An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd is ac­cel­er­at­ing its push on­to the glob­al stage, strength­en­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al foot­print while mod­ernising op­er­a­tions and prod­uct of­fer­ings to se­cure sus­tain­able growth for decades to come.

Over the past few years, there has been a great deal of dis­course in Trinidad & To­ba­go about the op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­port nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela to Trinidad for pro­cess­ing in­to petro­chem­i­cals or LNG and re-ex­port­ing the fi­nal prod­ucts to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. This con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor area of in­ter­est and es­pe­cial­ly with the Drag­on gas field.

In a trans­for­ma­tion of its lo­cal op­er­a­tions, Wood­side En­er­gy has ef­fec­tive­ly tran­si­tioned from be­ing a ma­jor em­ploy­er in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor to a sin­gle-per­son pres­ence on the ground as it dis­closed it has down­sized as a re­sult of its di­vest­ment of en­er­gy as­sets in this coun­try.

En­er­gy com­pa­nies gen­er­at­ed an es­ti­mat­ed US$17.3 bil­lion in for­eign ex­change be­tween 2011 and 2024, un­der­scor­ing the sec­tor’s con­tin­ued cen­tral­i­ty to T&T’s eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty de­spite grow­ing volatil­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to da­ta pre­sent­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (TTEITI).

An­gos­tu­ra has of­fi­cial­ly marked its re-en­try in­to the In­di­an mar­ket with a ship­ment val­ued at US $80,000, sig­nalling what the com­pa­ny en­vi­sions as a ma­jor ex­pan­sion in­to one of the world’s fastest-grow­ing con­sumer mar­kets.

Pro­man Trinidad has an­nounced that it will tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend op­er­a­tions at its melamine plant in Point Lisas for an ini­tial two-year pe­ri­od, cit­ing con­tin­ued un­favourable glob­al mar­ket con­di­tions.

Once a pop­u­lar fix­ture in down­town Port-of-Spain’s food and nightlife scene, D’ Bo­cas Restau­rant and Bar has closed its doors af­ter 37 years of op­er­a­tions in the cap­i­tal, cit­ing de­clin­ing sales, ris­ing tax­es and per­sis­tent post-pan­dem­ic chal­lenges.The clo­sure was an­nounced via so­cial me­dia, where the busi­ness al­so re­vealed plans to tran­si­tion the D’ Bo­cas brand in­to a food-fo­cused fran­chise in the fu­ture. Own­er Laird Agard said the de­ci­sion fol­lowed years of strug­gle to re­cov­er af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, com­pound­ed by sharply in­creased tax­es linked to bar op­er­a­tions and a 50 per cent de­cline in sales.

For years, pri­vate wa­ter truck­ing com­pa­nies have played a crit­i­cal sup­port role in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, step­ping in when pipe-borne sup­ply is dis­rupt­ed. In­ter­views with truck dri­vers, em­ploy­ees and in­dus­try sources in­di­cate that the sec­tor is now un­der se­vere strain due to chron­ic non-pay­ment by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), with one long-stand­ing con­trac­tor fac­ing the prospect of clo­sure and dozens of work­ers ex­pe­ri­enc­ing grow­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ship.
Truck dri­vers af­fil­i­at­ed with Flex­i­ble En­ter­pris­es Ltd con­tact­ed Sun­day Guardian Busi­ness Mag­a­zine over re­cent weeks, de­scrib­ing a wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion that has left em­ploy­ees “on the bread­line” and the com­pa­ny un­able to meet ba­sic fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions. Their iden­ti­ties are be­ing pro­tect­ed due to fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion and loss of fu­ture work.
The com­pa­ny, which has pro­vid­ed wa­ter truck­ing and re­lat­ed ser­vices to WASA for more than two decades, has not re­ceived pay­ment since June 2025, ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources. That last pay­ment, de­scribed as par­tial, was stretched over sev­er­al months in an at­tempt to keep op­er­a­tions alive. With those funds now ex­haust­ed, the com­pa­ny is strug­gling to ser­vice loans, pay staff, main­tain in­sur­ance cov­er­age and keep a fleet of more than 75 trucks road­wor­thy.
“This is not about ask­ing for a hand­out,” one source ex­plained. “The work was done. We have all the doc­u­men­ta­tion to prove it. We met every con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion. What we are ask­ing for is com­mu­ni­ca­tion and some lev­el of pay­ment to keep the com­pa­ny afloat.”