Tourism Trinidad’s Car­ni­val booth, which was lo­cat­ed in the North Park at the Car­ni­val Vil­lage, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, was buzzing with ac­tiv­i­ty as over 500 for­eign­ers from as close as Grena­da to as far as Ger­many came here to en­joy T&T Car­ni­val.

The Trinidad Ho­tels Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (THRTA) says larg­er prop­er­ties (100 rooms and over) are achiev­ing 100 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy while most of the in­de­pen­dent small­er prop­er­ties (un­der 100 rooms) are trend­ing be­tween 85 per cent to 100 per cent over this Car­ni­val week.

This week leg­endary in­vestor War­ren Buf­fet was quot­ed to have said: “if you in­vest­ed $10,000 in the S&P 500 in 1942, you’d have $51 mil­lion to­day.”

Pos­si­bil­i­ties for Gov­ern­ment to col­lab­o­rate with Es­to­nia on the en­hance­ment of T&T’s elec­tron­ic-Gov­ern­ment (e-Gov­ern­ment) ini­tia­tives were dis­cussed yes­ter­day by Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley and Es­ton­ian Pres­i­dent Ker­sti Kalju­laid.

Re­cent­ly in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert stat­ed that more Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are mak­ing pur­chas­es on­line. Im­bert al­so added that lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions used a to­tal of US$1.205 bil­lion to meet cred­it-card for­eign oblig­a­tions in 2018.

Re­cent­ly, the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre re­leased its an­nu­al re­port ti­tled Re­defin­ing Fi­nan­cial Sec­tor De­vel­op­ment. The stat­ed mis­sion of the IFC is ‘to at­tract and fa­cil­i­tate for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor that would en­hance the growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my by cre­at­ing sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment and gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change.’ How well is it do­ing?

The Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ings Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NIF) has made its first dis­tri­b­u­tion in­ter­est pay­ment of $122.2 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing the first se­mi-an­nu­al coupon pay­ment on the three se­ries of its four bil­lion dol­lar bond.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber has de­vel­oped an En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy De­c­la­ra­tion, recog­nis­ing the role of en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy in de­vel­op­ing the econ­o­my and re­duc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s green­house gas emis­sions.

Roy­al Dutch Shell, the com­pa­ny that is in part­ner­ship with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny to pur­chase and trans­port nat­ur­al gas from Venezuela’s Drag­on Field, has said it will com­ply with all laws that may ap­ply to the deal.

Last time, we dis­cussed a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to fund man­age­ment and ex­am­ples of strate­gies that can be em­ployed by the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) in an ef­fort to boost re­turns to the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of T&T.

First Cit­i­zens Bank Ltd (FCB) record­ed a prof­itable first quar­ter for the three months end­ed 31 De­cem­ber 2018. FCB record­ed a prof­it be­fore tax of $311.5 mil­lion, a growth of 22.7 mil­lion or 7.9 per cent when com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2017. The com­pa­ny’s prof­it af­ter tax was post­ed as $214.5 mil­lion, which ac­counts for a 5.5 per cent in­crease, as com­pared to De­cem­ber 2017.

San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al will not be re­turn­ing to T&T said Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on Wednes­day night at a fo­rum en­ti­tled Eco­nom­ic Im­pli­ca­tions of the Ter­mi­na­tion of the San­dals Project in To­ba­go, held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine.