For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, is warn­ing that em­ploy­ment loss­es in the bar and restau­rant sec­tor are an im­por­tant sig­nal, as he re­spond­ed to re­ports of mul­ti­ple clo­sures in the leisure.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) yes­ter­day an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Richard S. Sam­my as group pres­i­dent and CEO of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group and pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (T&T Cham­ber) yes­ter­day called for a phased ap­proach to the in­crease in the price of nat­ur­al gas to light man­u­fac­tur­ers, warn­ing that ris­ing costs for man­u­fac­tur­ers could have neg­a­tive knock-on ef­fects for con­sumers and ex­ports.

Over the past 20 years, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor has stag­nat­ed and de­clined, with its GDP con­tri­bu­tion falling be­low 1 per cent in re­cent years as the en­er­gy sec­tor has tak­en cen­tre stage. In the midst of de­clin­ing oil prices in 2015, the Gov­ern­ment pushed for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, but prob­lems in­clud­ing low pro­duc­tion, the ef­fects of cli­mate change, and a lack of fi­nance have re­mained. Small­hold­er farms that are dis­persed and ex­pe­ri­ence ex­pen­sive in­puts, in­ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture, have to con­tend with the con­se­quences of cli­mate change, such as de­creased rain­fall and flood­ing. Our lo­cal com­pet­i­tive­ness and val­ue ad­di­tion have been ham­pered by poor post-har­vest fa­cil­i­ties, a dis­or­gan­ised mar­ket and in­sti­tu­tion­al flaws. Re­liance on food im­ports is made worse by land degra­da­tion, un­pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­suf­fi­cient sup­port for re­search and de­vel­op­ment.

At the 2025 T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, then Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed that T&T, is “seek­ing to de­lin­eate the out­er lim­its of the coun­try’s con­ti­nen­tal shelf, be­yond 200 nau­ti­cal miles”, with the prac­ti­cal ob­jec­tive of be­ing “in a po­si­tion to ex­ploit the nat­ur­al re­sources” on that ex­tend­ed por­tion. The state­ment crys­tallised a strate­gic ini­tia­tive that has been qui­et­ly ad­vanc­ing through Unit­ed Na­tions process­es since 2009, but which now car­ries im­pli­ca­tions far be­yond the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of seabed ju­ris­dic­tion.

An­oth­er long-stand­ing Port-of-Spain busi­ness has an­nounced plans to tran­si­tion from its cur­rent op­er­at­ing mod­el.

HA­VANA (AP) — It’s al­most noon in Ha­vana when a hand­ful of tourists tum­ble out of a small yel­low bus and rush to­ward a row of shiny clas­sic cars, cam­eras in hand.

Guyana says re­al eco­nom­ic growth is ex­pect­ed to re­main strong with the oil and gas sec­tor con­tin­u­ing to be the main dri­ver of over­all growth, sup­port­ed by sus­tained dy­namism in the broad­er non-oil econ­o­my.

Lo­cal busi­ness­es sup­port­ing T&T’s back­bone oil and gas sec­tor are warn­ing of a “crip­pling ef­fect” on op­er­a­tions as the coun­try’s per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­age shifts from a mar­ket chal­lenge to a sys­tem-wide con­straint.

The Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (PPR­BA) has ex­pressed grave con­cern over com­ments made last week by Fair Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Be­van Nar­i­nesingh re­gard­ing the Com­mis­sion’s ca­pac­i­ty to en­force com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tions. Nar­i­nesingh told the me­dia that the FTC’s en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties had been con­strained by the ab­sence of a board for the past eight months.

PANA­MA CITY–Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says leg­is­la­tion to make pri­vate pen­sions tax free has been draft­ed and is now be­fore Cab­i­net, with the mea­sure ex­pect­ed to be in­clud­ed in a Fi­nance Bill due for Par­lia­ment by late Feb­ru­ary or ear­ly March.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) has for a long time been T&T’s largest and most prof­itable com­pa­ny, op­er­at­ing as a key play­er in the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor, its pri­ma­ry con­trib­u­tor to tax rev­enues and for­eign ex­change earn­ings.