Car­ni­val week rep­re­sents one of the most in­tense and com­pressed eco­nom­ic pe­ri­ods in T&T’s cal­en­dar. In a mat­ter of days, tens of thou­sands of vis­i­tors ar­rive, spend­ing at a pace that far ex­ceeds a nor­mal busi­ness cy­cle. For lo­cal busi­ness­es, Car­ni­val is not just a cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tion — it is a short, high-ve­loc­i­ty com­mer­cial win­dow.

Every year, we speak about Car­ni­val as cul­ture, cel­e­bra­tion and iden­ti­ty. All true. But we con­tin­ue to un­der­play a big­ger re­al­i­ty that should sit square­ly in the busi­ness sec­tion and in Cab­i­net notes alike:

Re­cent wage in­creas­es to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers have been iden­ti­fied by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) as a po­ten­tial hur­dle for eco­nom­ic growth in T&T in 2026.

Last week the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund quar­ter­ly in­vest­ment re­port for the pe­ri­od June 30th 2025 was pub­lished. We will get to the de­tails, but let’s start by ad­dress­ing the is­sue of time­li­ness.

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce yes­ter­day called on state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to pro­vide greater trans­paren­cy on its nat­ur­al gas pric­ing for­mu­la, as it joined oth­er pri­vate sec­tor bod­ies in crit­i­cis­ing the 77 per cent in­crease in nat­ur­al gas prices to T&T’s light in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial (LIC) cus­tomers.

They’ve brought you events such as the fan­cy Fete Gala, Boozy Boat, Sun­Sips, Cin­co and JA­VA J’Ou­vert, on the lo­cal scene, and the Tidal Wave boat cruise at Crop Over in Bar­ba­dos. Now, the di­rec­tors of Life Events (Live in Free­dom Every­day) are mak­ing plans to ex­tend the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al reach to make it one of the en­ter­tain­ment pow­er­hous­es in the Caribbean.

For­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor and for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an has said that the re­cent re­port by S&P Glob­al on de­clin­ing liq­uid­i­ty in T&T’s bank­ing sys­tem proves he was right when he pub­lished a pa­per last year say­ing T&T’s econ­o­my is in a “state of dis­e­qui­lib­ri­um.”

Car­ni­val ac­com­mo­da­tion in Port of Spain is al­ready in high de­mand ahead of the Feb­ru­ary 16 and 17 fes­tiv­i­ties, with ma­jor ho­tels ei­ther ful­ly booked or of­fer­ing lim­it­ed rooms at pre­mi­um rates, high­light­ing the pres­sure on vis­i­tors try­ing to se­cure last-minute stays.Checks with sev­er­al lead­ing ho­tels re­vealed that from to­day (Feb­ru­ary 12), there are no avail­able rooms in Port-of-Spain.

Apart from the im­pact of the cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro by US forces on T&T’s fu­ture nat­ur­al gas sup­plies on Jan­u­ary 3, the biggest and most con­se­quen­tial busi­ness news sto­ry for the first six weeks of 2026 has been the de­ci­sion by the state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) to in­crease the price of nat­ur­al gas to its light in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers (LICs) and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL.

In a re­gion of over 7,000 is­lands, and span­ning over 2.7 mil­lion square kilo­me­tres, air trans­port is more than a con­ve­nience... it’s a ne­ces­si­ty. But get­ting from one is­land to the next can of­ten be a strug­gle, char­ac­terised by in­con­ve­nient timeta­bles and mul­ti-sec­tor tick­ets on sev­er­al car­ri­ers. in­ter­Caribbean Air­ways, how­ev­er, with its bright­ly coloured air­plane tails and a “con­nect­ing you” brand promise, is at­tempt­ing to change that by link­ing the en­tire Caribbean in­to one seam­less net­work.

The T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) has is­sued a strong warn­ing to its mem­bers and the wider con­struc­tion in­dus­try, say­ing that the re­cent spike in nat­ur­al gas prices is plac­ing se­vere strain on the sec­tor and threat­ens to desta­bilise on­go­ing and fu­ture projects across the coun­try.

Af­ter some ear­ly un­cer­tain­ty, there are signs that the 2026 Car­ni­val will be ex­e­cut­ed as ex­pect­ed.