To ho­n­our his fa­ther, Gre­go­ry Lou­saing, af­ter his pass­ing, Jo­van Lou­saing re­cent­ly took a leap of faith that his dad had en­cour­aged him to make: start his own re­al es­tate busi­ness.

Shell said yes­ter­day that re­cent se­nior va­can­cies that have been pub­licly ad­ver­tised are not con­nect­ed to the Man­a­tee project.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, does not be­lieve the State of Emer­gency (SoE) has dis­rupt­ed busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Twice this month, this col­umn has ad­dressed the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s use of se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment process­es to se­lect con­trac­tors for ma­jor hous­ing projects in Trinidad. The is­sue was high­light­ed on June 4 un­der the head­line Who will ben­e­fit from the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion projects? and on June 11, with the head­line, Will the OPR do the right thing? Both of those com­men­taries looked at the pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions made by State en­ti­ties, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties Ltd.

Have you been look­ing in­to get­ting a US-dol­lar de­nom­i­nat­ed ac­count where you could re­ceive Pay­Pal de­posits, re­mote job salaries, ACH and wire trans­fers? The Charles Schwab In­ter­na­tion­al ac­count is a great plat­form for you. It is a bro­ker­age ac­count typ­i­cal­ly used for in­vest­ing, how­ev­er, it comes with a wide range of bank ac­count fea­tures that now give you ac­cess to a USD ac­count to re­ceive glob­al pay­ments — and the best part is you can open it re­mote­ly, with Per­son­al and Joint ac­counts be­ing free to open.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) re­quest for a record $4.12 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion from Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for fis­cal 2027 is be­ing met with a mix of con­cern, frus­tra­tion and calls for greater ac­count­abil­i­ty from stake­hold­ers, farm­ers and econ­o­mists who ar­gue that high­er fund­ing re­quests must be matched by tan­gi­ble re­sults on the ground.

Venezuela’s un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that there was a sec­ond ma­jor oil spill em­a­nat­ing from Trinidad wa­ters is ev­i­dence that re­la­tions be­tween Venezuela and T&T re­main frosty and there are dire se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of this.

For near­ly two decades, Port-of-Spain has en­dured se­vere flood­ing that halts busi­ness, par­a­lyzes trans­porta­tion, and in­flicts mil­lions in loss­es with alarm­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty. The cat­a­stroph­ic floods of No­vem­ber 2008 and No­vem­ber 2011 were clear warn­ings — yet they were some­what un­heed­ed.

The Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance brings with it the ex­pect­ed com­men­tary about the state of the lo­cal econ­o­my. My sug­ges­tion to the many econ­o­mists and an­a­lysts now pon­tif­i­cat­ing on the T&T econ­o­my is sim­ple: choose your words care­ful­ly.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Suri­name En­er­gy Cham­ber signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) at the Suri­name En­er­gy, Oil and Gas Sum­mit (SEOGS) 2026.

First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd share­hold­ers yes­ter­day elect­ed two new di­rec­tors to the board of the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned bank at its an­nu­al meet­ing at the Hilton Trinidad, while ap­prov­ing the com­pa­ny's au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and the reap­point­ment of au­di­tors.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, Do­minic Smith, says the Gov­ern­ment is pro­gress­ing with work on build­ing a mod­ern, cit­i­zen-cen­tred and dig­i­tal­ly en­abled Pub­lic Ser­vice.