Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed has re­cov­ered US$484,000 of a US$779,619.69 debt owed by Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny for its use of berth three and as­so­ci­at­ed ma­rine fa­cil­i­ties at the Port of Brighton, La Brea.

Econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein be­lieves Trinidad and To­ba­go could con­tin­ue run­ning fis­cal deficits un­til 2040, warn­ing that the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic fragili­ty re­quires ur­gent ac­tion to ex­pand non-en­er­gy ex­ports, im­prove labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion and re­duce its de­pen­dence on Gov­ern­ment spend­ing.

Re­gion­al econ­o­mist Je­re­my Stephen is warn­ing that Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd can face a pe­ri­od of re­duced prof­itabil­i­ty and strate­gic un­cer­tain­ty fol­low­ing last week’s res­ig­na­tion of board di­rec­tor Ed­ward Ince and the de­par­ture of CEO-des­ig­nate Richard Sam­my, de­vel­op­ments he says that have cre­at­ed un­set­tling sig­nals for cus­tomers, share­hold­ers and the wider mar­ket.

A con­sis­tent theme run­ning through my com­men­taries in the last 30-plus years has been strong and con­sis­tent ad­vo­ca­cy for the di­vest­ment (and pri­vati­sa­tion) of state-owned com­pa­nies in T&T. A re­cur­ring theme in my ear­li­er BG View com­men­taries has been that pri­vatis­ing state en­ter­pris­es (us­ing tem­plates of the ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing of First Cit­i­zens, Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd and Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd) trans­fers wealth from the State di­rect­ly to T&T na­tion­als and lo­cal in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors.

A fash­ion busi­ness can sell a gar­ment at a seem­ing­ly at­trac­tive price and still lose mon­ey. The prob­lem may not be the de­sign, qual­i­ty or sell­ing price, but rather a fail­ure to cal­cu­late the to­tal cost of bring­ing the gar­ment from con­cept to con­sumer. For Caribbean fash­ion busi­ness­es, this is more than an ac­count­ing is­sue. It is a mat­ter of com­mer­cial sur­vival, ex­port com­pet­i­tive­ness, and the re­gion’s ca­pac­i­ty to build a sus­tain­able, glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive fash­ion in­dus­try.

Cro­chet­ing is a skill in which the av­er­age young per­son may not be in­ter­est­ed, but 18-year-old Aliyah Pope has turned it in­to a busi­ness. Un­der her brand Tia­Hooked­It, she crotch­ets swim­suits, pants, shirts, hand­bags, hair ties, buck­et hats, key chains and a num­ber of oth­er items, which can be or­dered from her on­line store.

Many econ­o­mists and fi­nan­cial com­men­ta­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go have in the past spo­ken about fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty leg­is­la­tion. Yet it seems that much of the coun­try has lit­tle idea what this in­volves, which helps ex­plain why an im­por­tant pro­pos­al in the 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get has at­tract­ed so lit­tle ex­am­i­na­tion.

Bud­get 2027 mea­sures could help cush­ion the im­pact of T&T’s “strug­gling” econ­o­my, econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs has said.

A few weeks ago, I watched The AI Doc: Or How I Be­came an Apoc­alop­ti­mist on Net­flix. The doc­u­men­tary, di­rect­ed by Daniel Ro­her and Char­lie Tyrell, fol­lows a fa­ther-to-be as he tries to un­der­stand the world his child will in­her­it. Its ques­tions about ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence stayed with me be­cause they reach be­yond tech­nol­o­gy in­to par­ent­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, work and trust.

If the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor and the Named Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cer (NPO) were a mar­riage, we would now be sit­ting in cou­ples ther­a­py. I would be on one side of the room, ex­haust­ed from car­ry­ing the weight of the re­la­tion­ship, while the Reg­u­la­tor sat on the oth­er side in­sist­ing that the rules of the house­hold were clear. The ther­a­pist would ask, “When did com­mu­ni­ca­tion break down?” My an­swer would be sim­ple: it broke down when I need­ed sup­port and was met with si­lence.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s non-fi­nan­cial pub­lic sec­tor record­ed an op­er­at­ing sur­plus of $1.27 bil­lion dur­ing the first eight months of fis­cal 2026, al­most dou­bling the $662 mil­lion record­ed over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er, as im­proved cash op­er­a­tions among en­er­gy state en­ter­pris­es helped off­set weak­er bal­ances else­where in the pub­lic sec­tor.

For years, peo­ple have told me there is on­ly so much I can build as a solo­pre­neur. Even­tu­al­ly, they ar­gue, the ideas will out­grow the hours avail­able to ex­e­cute them.