The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion has des­ig­nat­ed this sea­son (March 25th – April 24th) “Pro­cure­ment Month 2026”, an in­vi­ta­tion to recog­nise the grow­ing im­por­tance of pro­cure­ment to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. This is wel­come. Pub­lic pro­cure­ment de­serves the at­ten­tion. How­ev­er, if this sea­son is to mean any­thing be­yond train­ing events and slo­gans, it should al­so prompt a more dif­fi­cult re­flec­tion: what does it take to pro­tect the peo­ple in­side the sys­tem who are asked to up­hold its in­tegri­ty? With more and more re­ports of Named Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cers (NPOs) be­ing trans­ferred or ter­mi­nat­ed, that ques­tion is now ur­gent.

In de­liv­er­ing the 2026 bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13, 2026, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, out­lined two con­crete pro­pos­als that would pro­vide more op­tions for lo­cal in­vestors who want to de­ploy their TT-dol­lar sav­ings. Those two pro­pos­als were:

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has as­sured the pub­lic that the gov­ern­ment does not in­tend to in­crease fu­el prices at this time, de­spite the ris­ing cost of im­port­ed en­er­gy prod­ucts dri­ven by es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions in the Mid­dle East.

Fol­low­ing the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, which re­sult­ed in a tran­si­tion from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led gov­ern­ment, the sta­tus of sev­er­al high-pro­file ho­tel projects has come un­der scruti­ny.

The ANSA McAL Group has seen in­creased growth in the US and Guyanese mar­kets in the 2025 fi­nan­cial year.

In a strate­gic move to so­lid­i­fy the fu­ture of the na­tion’s nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries held a meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from EOG Re­sources.

The Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism is fac­ing mount­ing pres­sure over its fail­ure to ap­point a board to the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC), with a for­mal pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter now threat­en­ing ju­di­cial re­view.

As glob­al geopo­lit­i­cal shifts con­tin­ue to re­shape in­ter­na­tion­al trade, T&T’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is ag­gres­sive­ly piv­ot­ing to­ward its clos­est neigh­bours.

Lo­cal in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, Cli­co, record­ed a $567.66 mil­lion in­crease in its af­ter-tax prof­its for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025, which was main­ly as a re­sult of $340.59 mil­lion in in­come the in­sur­er re­ceived from the set­tle­ment of the Cli­co En­er­gy mat­ter.

On Feb­ru­ary 3rd, 2026, it was an­nounced that the overn­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go (‘T&T’) and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates signed an Agree­ment for the Pro­mo­tion and Rec­i­p­ro­cal Pro­tec­tion of In­vest­ment. Though wel­come news, it is wor­thy to bear in mind that this agree­ment is but one of many which af­ford var­i­ous ben­e­fits to T&T in­vestors. In this mul­ti-part se­ries, we dis­cuss the var­i­ous in­vest­ment pro­tec­tion agree­ments (al­so com­mon­ly re­ferred to as bi­lat­er­al in­vest­ment treaties) to which T&T is par­ty and pro­vide a high-lev­el overview of some of the key pro­vi­sions of such agree­ments, in­clud­ing the rights and ben­e­fits avail­able to T&T in­vestors.

Japan­ese Am­bas­sador to T&T Aki­ma Umeza­wa says while T&T and Japan have long en­joyed ben­e­fi­cial trade re­la­tions, re­cent geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions can open more op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal ex­ports.

The lim­it­ed scope of cov­er­age for many who face ad­verse im­pacts due to cli­mate change was put in­to per­spec­tive at the Re­port­ing Cli­mate Im­pacts in a Cli­mate Jus­tice Con­text Work­shop at the Mar­riott ho­tel last Wednes­day.