The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has wel­comed the ini­tial VAT re­funds by the Gov­ern­ment and the loan de­fer­ral sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed by the banks but it con­tends more needs to be done for Mi­cro, Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (MSMEs).

The Banker’s As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) has an­nounced that there will soon be changes to the op­er­a­tions of some bank­ing in­sti­tu­tions.

Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (RBL) has an­nounced that it will be low­er­ing the in­ter­est rates on loans and giv­ing par­ties the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fer loan pay­ments.

The Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee (MPC) of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go has an­nounced a re­duc­tion in the Re­po rate as it tries to sup­port the econ­o­my hit by the free-fall of en­er­gy prices and the loss of pro­duc­tion ex­pect­ed as the im­pact of mea­sures to com­bat the COVID-19 is felt in T&T.

The Covid-19 out­break has had dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects on the world econ­o­my and if the virus’ im­pacts are in­ten­si­fied - it can mean neg­a­tive glob­al growth for the first quar­ter of 2020.

The Banker’s As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T is ask­ing cus­tomers to lim­it their vis­its to the bank as much as pos­si­ble.

Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd has re­alised a first-quar­ter ad­just­ed net in­come af­ter tax­a­tion of $156 mil­lion for the quar­ter end­ed Jan­u­ary 31.

A study by Or­bis Re­search has re­cent­ly in­di­cat­ed that the in­sur­ance mar­ket in T&T is boom­ing.

The de­ci­sion to re­strict trav­ellers from Ger­many, Spain and France from en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go due to the out­break of COVID-19 (Coro­n­avirus) is like­ly to hurt tourism in To­ba­go.

The T&T Cham­ber is in the process of plan­ning an in­for­ma­tion ses­sion for its mem­bers in con­junc­tion with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) fol­low­ing the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break.

Vice-Pres­i­dent of Op­er­a­tions at the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) Mon­i­ca La Ben­nett has ar­tic­u­lat­ed that pover­ty re­duc­tion can­not be achieved whilst there is gen­der in­equal­i­ty.

Ja­maican-based com­pa­ny GraceKennedy (GK) has lim­it­ed trav­el by its staff in a re­sponse to the Coro­n­avirus out­break.