We are suck­ers for fraud­sters. They try to steal your heart, take your mon­ey, and use your iden­ti­ty for their ben­e­fit. They can op­er­ate alone or as part of an or­gan­i­sa­tion of crooks. Some­times they are close to you, like a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber, or in In­dia or Nige­ria, with a give­away ac­cent. Why do we fall for their con­vinc­ing tac­tics? With new me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools, can we de­vel­op re­sis­tance to per­sua­sion?

One of the most im­por­tant—and po­ten­tial­ly most re­veal­ing—as­pects of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s Mon­day Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is what he says about the en­er­gy wind­fall that land­ed in the Gov­ern­ment’s lap in the third quar­ter of cal­en­dar 2026.

On Mon­day, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will present the 2027 Na­tion­al Bud­get. There will be the usu­al fo­cus on the mea­sures an­nounced, the tax­es ad­just­ed, the in­cen­tives of­fered, the pro­grammes fund­ed and the projects promised. In our en­thu­si­asm to get to these mat­ters, we of­ten for­get to an­a­lyze the econ­o­my that the min­is­ter is ac­tu­al­ly bud­get­ing for.

More than 10 work­ers at Trad­er Jack’s Restau­rant at Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain, have been placed on tem­po­rary lay­off as the busi­ness con­fronts a dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial pe­ri­od.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my de­clined by 0.5 per cent in 2025 and is pre­dict­ed to de­cline again this year, by 0.2 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the World Bank Group’s Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Eco­nom­ic Up­date.

In­creased costs as re­sult of Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tion and for­eign ex­change chal­lenges have once again tak­en a toll on Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd’s prof­its, ac­cord­ing to its fi­nan­cial state­ments for the first nine months of the fi­nan­cial year 2026,

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was thrown in­to mourn­ing af­ter the sud­den death of Sean Roach, the CEO of Langston Roach In­dus­tries (LRI), late on Sun­day.

Rat­ing agency Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices (Cari­CRIS) has reaf­firmed the sov­er­eign is­suer cred­it rat­ings as­signed to the Gov­ern­ment of The Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GORTT) of Cari­AA (for­eign and lo­cal cur­ren­cy rat­ings) on its re­gion­al rat­ing scale.

For years, I have been build­ing dif­fer­ent pieces of what has now be­come the Digipreneur Net­work.

For many house­holds, the test of a na­tion­al Bud­get is not the size of the al­lo­ca­tions or the promis­es made from the par­lia­men­tary podi­um, but how far the salary stretch­es when the bills are paid.

High­er prices can ease a Bud­get. They can­not re­place de­plet­ed re­sources, ac­cu­mu­lat­ed ex­pe­ri­ence or the need to turn both in­to last­ing na­tion­al val­ue.

The ris­ing cost-of-liv­ing and food price volatil­i­ty have been na­tion­al talk­ing points for weeks ahead of this week’s an­nounce­ment that the Na­tion­al Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is set for Oc­to­ber 12.