Brand­ing is a key el­e­ment of any busi­ness, and one that Harpy Lyef En­ter­tain­ment own­er Jamelle Lovelace un­der­stands well.

Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go will change its dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el in Jan­u­ary 2027, with Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion Di­vi­sion be­com­ing the com­pa­ny’s main dis­trib­u­tor lo­cal­ly.

Some peo­ple be­lieve gift­ed peo­ple can pre­dict the fu­ture. Of­ten, we cred­it en­tre­pre­neurs’ suc­cess to their abil­i­ty to see what comes next. The fact re­mains that our minds are ex­pla­na­tion ma­chines which fre­quent­ly get con­nec­tions be­tween phe­nom­e­na wrong. Do en­tre­pre­neurs re­al­ly see around the bend? The busi­ness land­scape is full of cas­es where en­tre­pre­neurs got it wrong, as many peo­ple do. If you can­not pre­dict the fu­ture, what is the best mod­el of think­ing when faced with un­cer­tain­ty?

For the sec­ond year in a row, two lead­ing Caribbean voic­es laid bare dis­parate par­a­digms on in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism. Speak­ing with an eye to­ward their re­spec­tive coun­tries' and the re­gion's most press­ing transna­tion­al chal­lenges, they shared their vi­sions for all the world to see.

It is a ques­tion that has gone vi­ral on so­cial me­dia, but it has served as a stark mark­er of the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty faced by most cit­i­zens as most have not­ed the cost of liv­ing has large­ly in­creased.

A coun­try is not cho­sen on­ly at elec­tion time, in a bud­get or de­vel­op­ment plan. It is cho­sen in thou­sands of low-vis­i­bil­i­ty de­ci­sions: whether an em­ploy­ee solves a cus­tomer’s prob­lem or pass­es it on; whether a busi­ness pays a sup­pli­er when promised; whether a cit­i­zen ver­i­fies a claim be­fore for­ward­ing it; and whether a com­mu­ni­ty treats pub­lic prop­er­ty as be­long­ing to every­one or to no one.

Last month, as I pe­rused the busi­ness sec­tion in the lo­cal news­pa­pers, two ar­ti­cles at­tract­ed my at­ten­tion, the first a sto­ry on the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s in­ter­est in the lo­cal ven­ture cap­i­tal ecosys­tem, and the sec­ond, the com­ple­tion of a two-part sale trans­ac­tion which end­ed with the sale of 55 per cent share­hold­ing of Trinidad Sys­tems Lim­it­ed (TSL) to the

Cana­di­an busi­ness­es are show­ing grow­ing in­ter­est in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with man­u­fac­tur­ers and oth­er lo­cal com­pa­nies be­ing of­fered greater op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­ter the Cana­di­an mar­ket large­ly tar­iff-free, Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Michael Callan says.

In com­pet­i­tive mar­kets, price is of­ten one of the first things busi­ness­es fo­cus on. When cus­tomers com­pare prod­ucts or ser­vices, it can be tempt­ing to as­sume that the low­est price will al­ways win. This can lead busi­ness­es in­to a cy­cle of dis­counts, re­duced mar­gins, and con­stant pres­sure to be­come cheap­er than the com­pe­ti­tion. While price will al­ways mat­ter, com­pet­ing on price alone can be a dif­fi­cult and un­sus­tain­able strat­e­gy.

Busi­ness­es across T&T and the wider Caribbean must em­brace ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and tech­no­log­i­cal change if they want to re­main com­pet­i­tive in the years ahead, ac­cord­ing to Southex CEO George Singh.

Lib­er­ty Caribbean has ap­point­ed for­mer First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ja­son Julien as vice-pres­i­dent and coun­try man­ag­er for Trinidad and To­ba­go, as the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny re­shapes its com­mer­cial lead­er­ship across the re­gion.

Chair­man of the Tax Ap­peal Board Dr An­tho­ny Gafoor has warned that chron­ic un­der­fund­ing, de­lays in ap­point­ments, out­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tive bot­tle­necks are threat­en­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of one of T&T’s key ju­di­cial in­sti­tu­tions.