With the Gov­ern­ment prepar­ing to de­liv­er its na­tion­al bud­get next week Mon­day, amid per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages, econ­o­mists and a busi­ness leader are urg­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers to con­front one of the coun­try’s most dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic ques­tions: whether the T&T dol­lar re­mains ap­pro­pri­ate­ly val­ued.

The ris­ing cost-of-liv­ing and food price volatil­i­ty have been na­tion­al talk­ing points for weeks ahead of this week’s an­nounce­ment that the Na­tion­al Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is set for Oc­to­ber 12.

Agri­cul­ture con­sul­tant Riyadh Mo­hammed is call­ing for a sharp­er fo­cus on the eco­nom­ic re­turns from Gov­ern­ment spend­ing on agri­cul­ture, ar­gu­ing that the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get must move be­yond its tra­di­tion­al fo­cus on al­lo­ca­tion mon­ey to mea­sur­ing how ef­fec­tive­ly those in­vest­ments trans­late in­to pro­duc­tion, stronger farm busi­ness­es and greater food se­cu­ri­ty.

For many house­holds, the test of a na­tion­al Bud­get is not the size of the al­lo­ca­tions or the promis­es made from the par­lia­men­tary podi­um, but how far the salary stretch­es when the bills are paid.

The Cen­tral Bank and eight part­ner in­sti­tu­tions have re­newed their com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy across the coun­try through the sign­ing of a new Mem­o­ran­dum of Co­op­er­a­tion (MOC), aimed at strength­en­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion on fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives and im­prov­ing the fi­nan­cial well-be­ing of cit­i­zens.

De­spite the re­cent an­nounce­ment of the down­siz­ing of its work­force in T&T, Pro­man is look­ing for­ward to good news in the up­com­ing bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

ANSA McAL Ltd has ex­e­cut­ed an amend­ed and re­stat­ed loan agree­ment that re­fi­nances an ex­ist­ing syn­di­cat­ed fa­cil­i­ty and pro­vides the com­pa­ny with the op­tion to ac­cess ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for gen­er­al cor­po­rate pur­pos­es.

Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO) CEO Dan­ny Ma­haraj says the state agency is step­ping up its dri­ve to help mi­cro and small en­tre­pre­neurs ex­pand their busi­ness­es, with op­por­tu­ni­ties emerg­ing for T&T com­pa­nies to en­ter the Cana­di­an mar­ket.

Massy Hold­ings said yes­ter­day that it ex­pects to record an ac­count­ing loss of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$9.8 mil­lion ($66.54 mil­lion) on the sale of its Cater­pil­lar-re­lat­ed line of busi­ness and re­lat­ed as­sets in T&T to Ma­chin­ery Cor­po­ra­tion Mo­tors (MA­CORP). The loss would al­so in­clude the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of Massy re­main­ing ma­chin­ery busi­ness, com­pris­ing Shell lu­bri­cants and trucks, the group said.

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is once again in the spot­light. The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, has passed the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives but, at the time of writ­ing, there is no fi­nal out­come

For the sec­ond year in a row, two lead­ing Caribbean voic­es laid bare dis­parate par­a­digms on in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism. Speak­ing with an eye to­ward their re­spec­tive coun­tries' and the re­gion's most press­ing transna­tion­al chal­lenges, they shared their vi­sions for all the world to see.

Last week, un­der the head­line “Are the pro­cure­ment amend­ments a li­cence for cor­rup­tion?”, this col­umn touched on pro­posed changes to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, which the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion suc­cess­ful­ly se­cured ap­proval for in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment. The ap­proval by the Sen­ate has be­come con­tro­ver­sial, of course, be­cause Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, Wade Mark, used his cast­ing vote to ap­prove the leg­is­la­tion af­ter the 15 Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.