Last week, S&P Glob­al Rat­ings re­vised its out­look on the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go from sta­ble to neg­a­tive, while af­firm­ing at ‘BBB-/A-3,’ its long-and short-term for­eign and lo­cal cur­ren­cy sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ings on the coun­try.

For­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie has ar­gued that al­most 40 years ago the coun­try was in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion and T&T was suc­cess­ful­ly able to get it­self out of that eco­nom­ic abyss and it can do so again on the back­drop of the con­tem­po­rary chal­lenges.

T&T’s pri­vate sec­tor has re­spond­ed to the re­newed US sup­port for the Drag­on Gas deal with a blend of grat­i­tude and firm cau­tion, stress­ing that the pri­ma­ry chal­lenge—se­cur­ing favourable terms with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment—now re­quires “su­pe­ri­or ne­go­ti­at­ing skill” and im­me­di­ate ur­gency.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber has long been a ded­i­cat­ed sup­port­er of the Ocean Con­ser­van­cy’s In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Clean-up. For the past decade, we’ve col­lab­o­rat­ed with our mem­ber com­pa­nies and var­i­ous NGOs to clean up beach­es at Car­li Bay in Cou­va, Ves­signy Beach in La Brea and Quinam Beach, on the coast due south of Siparia. Over time, we’ve fo­cused more of our ef­forts on Quinam Beach, which re­mains a beau­ti­ful south­ern Trinida­di­an gem, de­spite the sig­nif­i­cant trash ac­cu­mu­la­tion it faces.

Eight man­age­r­i­al-lev­el con­tracts at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) have not been re­newed, chair­man Feeroz Khan has con­firmed.

Mount­ing com­plaints from vis­i­tors about To­ba­go’s largest ho­tel — rang­ing from sewage leaks to noisy con­struc­tion and mouldy rooms with bro­ken fix­tures— have thrust the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort in­to an un­wel­come spot­light, even as man­age­ment in­sists guests are not in dan­ger and gov­ern­ment promis­es a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to its fu­ture in the up­com­ing bud­get.

Sher­win Long, Head, TTEITI Sec­re­tari­at and Al­isa De­o­nanan, pol­i­cy an­a­lyst, TTEITI Sec­re­tari­at

As a core com­po­nent of de­vel­op­ing economies, the main source of in­come for many, the cor­ner­stone of food se­cu­ri­ty and a means of re­duc­ing pover­ty, agri­cul­ture is vi­tal in emerg­ing na­tions like T&T. It can make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to GDP and ex­por rev­enue and em­ploys a siz­able sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al ar­eas, if done cor­rect­ly.

As the coun­try pre­pares for the up­com­ing na­tion­al 2026 bud­get ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered ear­ly next month, UWI pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics Roger Ho­sein says there needs to be a strate­gic eco­nom­ic push to take the coun­try for­ward.

S&P Glob­al Rat­ings re­vised the out­look of three com­pa­nies in which the State has an own­er­ship stake—Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, First Cit­i­zens Group and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC)—from sta­ble to neg­a­tive last Fri­day, the day af­ter the in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing agency low­ered the Gov­ern­ment’s out­look.

Ver­li­er Quan-Vie, vice pres­i­dent, com­mer­cial at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), for­mal­ly re­signed from the com­pa­ny on Mon­day, Guardian Me­dia has learned.  

In a land­mark and high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed judg­ment in JCPC/2024/0021 Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (“UWI”) v the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty and Agency (OS­HA), the Privy Coun­cil con­firmed the ap­plic­a­ble lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­ods un­der the OSH Act.