The jour­ney was nev­er fast, nev­er script­ed and nev­er guar­an­teed. For An­ge­lo Daniel Austin, who has spent just over 11 months as CEO of Xtra Foods, the climb from su­per­mar­ket floor staff to the ex­ec­u­tive suite was de­lib­er­ate­ly an­chored in ser­vice, dis­ci­pline, men­tor­ship and an un­wa­ver­ing be­lief that de­tails mat­ter.
Austin grew up in Brazil Vil­lage, one of six sib­lings in a house­hold where mon­ey was tight but val­ues were firm­ly root­ed. Those ear­ly lessons, he told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last Fri­day, shaped not on­ly his char­ac­ter but his ca­reer.
“I came from a very hum­ble home,” Austin re­called. “My par­ents taught us sim­ple things: if some­body gives you some­thing, al­ways say thank you. Al­ways say, “Have a nice day.”

The con­flict be­tween the US and Venezuela may not on­ly erupt in­to a tra­di­tion­al war with sol­diers and ri­fles, but there could be cy­ber­war which can im­pact T&T’s busi­ness­es and the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

When Nicole Kalloo dis­cov­ered she was be­ing over­charged by the elec­tri­cians hired to build-out her bak­ery, she did not sim­ply suc­cumb to the frus­tra­tion of the mo­ment or set­tle for a fi­nan­cial loss.

The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) has for­mal­ly no­ti­fied em­ploy­ers and work­ers that Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions will rise from 13.2 per cent to 16.2 per cent, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 5, 2026, fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the 2025 Fi­nance Bill.

Fol­low­ing years of what it de­scribed as “a se­vere and es­ca­lat­ing for­eign ex­change (forex or FX) cri­sis,” the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce yes­ter­day ad­vo­cat­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ex­change rate in which the TT dol­lar is aligned to de­mand and sup­ply, which the pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion says would of­fer “a prag­mat­ic ap­proach to restor­ing bal­ance in the forex mar­ket.”

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) yes­ter­day grant­ed a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) to EOG Re­sources for off­shore ex­plo­ration with­in the NC­MA 4(a) un­lim­it­ed block.

Cus­tomers af­fect­ed by pro­longed de­lays in­volv­ing Trin­ba­go Ex­press USA are set to re­ceive long-await­ed re­lief, as the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) has an­nounced that the de­liv­ery of car­go will now pro­ceed fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion.

Massy Group has closed the fi­nan­cial year 2025 on a strong foot­ing, de­liv­er­ing growth in rev­enue, prof­it, and cash gen­er­a­tion de­spite glob­al mar­ket volatil­i­ty.

On Tues­day, Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny (SFC) an­nounced the merg­er of its two com­pa­nies in the re­gion—Sagi­cor Group Ja­maica and Sagi­cor Life Inc—bring­ing to­geth­er a Ja­maican com­pa­ny with a T&T in­cor­po­rat­ed en­ti­ty un­der a new, sin­gle Caribbean hold­ing struc­ture.

I thank Mr. Fazir Khan, Pres­i­dent of the JCC, for his thought­ful en­gage­ment on the ques­tion of an­nu­al pro­cure­ment plan­ning un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­poal of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (PPDP­PA) in the Busi­ness Guardian of De­cem­ber 4, un­der the head­line ‘The OPRs ap­proach is prag­mat­ic.’

The Caribbean is liv­ing through a mo­ment of ris­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sion. As the Unit­ed States in­ten­si­fies pres­sure on the Maduro gov­ern­ment in Venezuela, the rip­ples reach Cari­com shores fast. None of these coun­tries chose this con­fronta­tion, yet each of them is forced to nav­i­gate its con­se­quences.

In 1843, Charles Dick­ens pub­lished the clas­sic - A Christ­mas Car­ol. Since then, it has formed the ba­sis of many a Christ­mas con­cert. To­day it will form the ba­sis of an im­por­tant les­son in per­son­al fi­nance. This col­umn is based on a book ti­tled “The Fi­nan­cial Wis­dom of Ebenez­er Scrooge: 5 Prin­ci­ples To Trans­form Your Re­la­tion­ship with Mon­ey” by Ted Klontz, Brad Klontz and Rick Kahler.