As a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state (SID) and net en­er­gy ex­porter, Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) has a unique po­si­tion in the glob­al en­er­gy tran­si­tion and cli­mate change space. The coun­try has sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties to play an im­por­tant role both re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly through da­ta dis­clo­sures and project im­ple­men­ta­tion. But, there are al­so chal­lenges to over­come. With nat­ur­al gas tout­ed as the gate­way fu­el for the tran­si­tion, the coun­try has the twin chal­lenge of pro­duc­ing more gas to serve its do­mes­tic petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try and ex­port­ing LNG to its glob­al clien­tele.

In T&T, we’ve of­ten heard the state­ment “there are over one mil­lion cars on the road.” This refers to the num­ber of reg­is­tered cars in the coun­try and does not take in­to ac­count dereg­is­tra­tion or in­op­er­a­ble ve­hi­cles. Over the last decade how­ev­er, over 213,000 ve­hi­cles have been reg­is­tered and yet fu­el sales have de­clined.

The Caribbean is be­ing urged to place more em­pha­sis on cli­mate change re­silience and di­vers­fi­ca­tion away from tourism de­pen­dent economies.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM), Ian Mitchell, is con­cerned about the on­go­ing glob­al trade wars which, he says, can pos­si­bly have an im­pact on the price of wheat that the com­pa­ny im­ports from North Amer­i­ca.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce is call­ing on all po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to ad­dress the ur­gent eco­nom­ic and busi­ness chal­lenges fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the gen­er­al elec­tion on April 28, 2025.

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is con­fi­dent that IDB In­vest’s US$150m deal with the Massy Group will be a per­fect in­cu­ba­tor for fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the bank and the Gov­ern­ment.

The world is in a whirl­wind of trade wars due to tar­iffs that have been threat­ened to be im­posed by Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Still, Cari­com coun­tries are is hop­ing to avoid se­vere eco­nom­ic fall­out as a re­sult of an­oth­er US pol­i­cy.

The Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) has made a $25.5 mil­lion in­vest­ment in plant and equip­ment that will help the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned com­pa­ny man­u­fac­ture more prod­ucts, more quick­ly, while main­tain­ing qual­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Re­pub­lic Bank is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency (Caribbean Ex­port) on a ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing ini­tia­tive to po­si­tion small busi­ness­es for ex­pand­ed suc­cess.

T&T's busi­ness lead­ers are large­ly op­ti­mistic and ea­ger to work with new Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Vish­nu Dhan­paul, and are call­ing on him to ad­dress the thorny is­sue of for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty.

Lo­cal, pub­licly list­ed, mul­ti­line group, Agos­ti­ni, is hop­ing that its re­brand can help grow re­gion­al busi­ness and by proxy help the growth of Caribbean brands.

While the Cen­tral Bank cur­rent­ly holds around US$163 mil­lion in gold re­serves as at the end of De­cem­ber 2024, with mount­ing eco­nom­ic and geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ties, T&T’s banker to the Gov­ern­ment and reg­u­la­tor of fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions ought to se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er ex­pand­ing these hold­ings, giv­en gold’s ef­fec­tive­ness as a hedge against eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty, econ­o­mist Dr Valmik­ki Ar­joon told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.