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.

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.

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.

This was the view shared by In­spec­tor of Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions for the Cen­tral Bank, Michelle Fran­cis-Pan­tor, dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Fi­nance and Le­gal Af­fairs on Fri­day. The JSC served as an ‘In­quiry in­to the su­per­vi­so­ry and pru­den­tial over­sight of cred­it unions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Pos­i­tive mo­men­tum is build­ing in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor in 2026, dri­ven by grow­ing ex­pec­ta­tions as more oil and gas projects are sched­uled to come on stream this year and in 2027.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance said yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment's US$1 bil­lion 10-year se­nior un­se­cured sov­er­eign bond at­tract­ed de­mand for rough­ly 2.5 times the fi­nal of­fer size.

As the glob­al en­er­gy sec­tor ac­cel­er­ates its shift away from high-car­bon fu­els, T&T’s largest methanol pro­duc­er is repo­si­tion­ing one of its longest-stand­ing prod­ucts for a new role. Switzer­land-head­quar­tered Pro­man is ad­vanc­ing methanol as a low­er-emis­sion tran­si­tion fu­el that can be de­ployed be­yond chem­i­cals and man­u­fac­tur­ing, with ap­pli­ca­tions in trans­port and pow­er gen­er­a­tion that could ma­te­ri­al­ly re­shape en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty across the Caribbean.

One year be­fore T&T gained in­de­pen­dence from Great Britain, a lit­tle air­line called Wind­ward Is­lands Air­ways In­ter­na­tion­al NV (Winair) was found­ed in Sint Maarten. One year lat­er, it spread its wings and be­gan com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions. Now, 64 years lat­er, the Caribbean’s old­est air­line is spread­ing its wings once again and launch­ing flights to Trinidad.

The Gov­ern­ment’s much-tout­ed re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion blue­print was a key fea­ture at the Am­cham T&T’s 2026 Eco­nom­ic Out­look Fo­rum, where busi­ness lead­ers ex­pressed scep­ti­cism about its fea­si­bil­i­ty and like­ly im­pact.

Vir­tu­al as­sets in­clud­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cies, and vir­tu­al as­set ac­tiv­i­ties, con­tin­ue to gain in promi­nence, as con­fi­dence in the un­der­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy in­creas­es, sup­port­ed by a grow­ing dis­trust in tra­di­tion­al sys­tems. Trinidad and To­ba­go (‘T&T’) has re­cent­ly for­malised its at­tempt to be­gin reg­u­la­tion of the vir­tu­al as­set sec­tor, with the re­cent pas­sage of the Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Act, Act No. 12 of 2025 (the ‘VASP Act’), which was as­sent­ed to on 23 De­cem­ber 2025.

Some busi­ness lead­ers and a se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert agree that the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to im­ple­ment the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) through­out the coun­try can have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the busi­ness sec­tor.

For­mer En­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has ques­tioned the wis­dom be­hind the re­moval of Safe To Work (STOW) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments for state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­nies.