The Cen­tral Bank and eight part­ner in­sti­tu­tions have re­newed their com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy across the coun­try through the sign­ing of a new Mem­o­ran­dum of Co­op­er­a­tion (MOC), aimed at strength­en­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion on fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives and im­prov­ing the fi­nan­cial well-be­ing of cit­i­zens.

Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO) CEO Dan­ny Ma­haraj says the state agency is step­ping up its dri­ve to help mi­cro and small en­tre­pre­neurs ex­pand their busi­ness­es, with op­por­tu­ni­ties emerg­ing for T&T com­pa­nies to en­ter the Cana­di­an mar­ket.

Massy Hold­ings said yes­ter­day that it ex­pects to record an ac­count­ing loss of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$9.8 mil­lion ($66.54 mil­lion) on the sale of its Cater­pil­lar-re­lat­ed line of busi­ness and re­lat­ed as­sets in T&T to Ma­chin­ery Cor­po­ra­tion Mo­tors (MA­CORP). The loss would al­so in­clude the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of Massy re­main­ing ma­chin­ery busi­ness, com­pris­ing Shell lu­bri­cants and trucks, the group said.

Caribbean work­ers are high­ly skilled, but many are not equipped for the jobs emerg­ing as Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) trans­forms the work­place, ac­cord­ing to the founder of Il­lu­mi­nate In­tel­li­gence AI Con­sult­ing, who is an AI con­sul­tant and ed­u­ca­tor, Waynelle Sandy-Pat­ter­son.

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is once again in the spot­light. The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, has passed the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives but, at the time of writ­ing, there is no fi­nal out­come

West In­di­an Traders Ltd has of­fi­cial­ly closed its mile­stone 30th year of op­er­a­tion, mark­ing its de­but as a pub­licly list­ed en­ter­prise with a strong surge in top-line rev­enue along­side strate­gic op­er­a­tional re­align­ments.

Two years ago, I land­ed in Bangkok with two suit­cas­es and one goal: put my­self in an en­vi­ron­ment that could pour back in­to me.

A sup­pli­er can spend mon­ey prepar­ing a bid, lose the con­tract and have to de­cide whether it can af­ford to ask if the process was law­ful. Un­der the pro­posed Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, that de­ci­sion could be­come more ex­pen­sive and the time avail­able to make it much short­er.

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Massy Group has sold its Cater­pil­lar busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go to Ma­chin­ery Cor­po­ra­tion Mo­tors (MA­CORP), with the trans­ac­tion form­ing part of a strate­gic re­view of Massy Ma­chin­ery.

Last week, un­der the head­line “Are the pro­cure­ment amend­ments a li­cence for cor­rup­tion?”, this col­umn touched on pro­posed changes to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, which the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion suc­cess­ful­ly se­cured ap­proval for in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment. The ap­proval by the Sen­ate has be­come con­tro­ver­sial, of course, be­cause Sen­ate Pres­i­dent, Wade Mark, used his cast­ing vote to ap­prove the leg­is­la­tion af­ter the 15 Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors vot­ed against it.

As T&T ap­proach­es its up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion un­der the weight of a se­vere dual cri­sis: per­va­sive vi­o­lent and white-col­lar crime along­side an acute short­age of for­eign ex­change.

The 2027 bud­get must be tied to a long-term eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy, not treat­ed as an­oth­er one-year ex­er­cise, Caribbean En­er­gy Cham­ber CEO Eu­gene Tiah has ar­gued.