Se­nior econ­o­mist and head of the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics at UWI St Au­gus­tine, Dr Daren Con­rad is cau­tion­ing that re­cent back­pay dis­burse­ments to pub­lic-sec­tor work­ers are un­like­ly to de­liv­er the eco­nom­ic up­lift many an­tic­i­pat­ed, cit­ing shaky con­sumer con­fi­dence, labour mar­ket dis­tor­tions, and wors­en­ing glob­al con­di­tions.

Yes­ter­day, work­ers mixed ce­ment in the front yard of the house fever­ish­ly, but they ad­mit­ted to the Guardian they were not sure how much more work they would get at the site.

Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) yes­ter­day fol­lowed through on its pro­pos­al to in­crease the price of its ce­ment bags by 15 per cent as a re­sult of the “di­rect and sig­nif­i­cant” im­pact on its cost of pro­duc­tion of the 77 per cent in­crease in its nat­ur­al gas price im­posed by state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.

The Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny (NIF) yes­ter­day an­nounced that it made three coupon pay­ments on its bonds.

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC), Vivek Char­ran, has warned that the de­ci­sion by ANSA McAL and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) to with­draw from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) high­lights grow­ing strain be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor dur­ing a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic tran­si­tion.
Char­ran de­scribed TCL’s de­par­ture as sig­nif­i­cant, not­ing the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al im­por­tance.

The staff team from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) that is vis­it­ing T&T for the 2026 Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion high­light­ed sev­er­al pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments in the T&T econ­o­my, ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease yes­ter­day from the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

On Jan­u­ary 30, along with a team that in­clud­ed Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Car­la Bar­nett, Prime Min­is­ter of St. Kitts and Nevis Ter­rance Drew paid an of­fi­cial vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Drew met with the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in his ca­pac­i­ty as the cur­rent chair of Cari­com.

More than sev­en years af­ter the state-owned oil re­fin­ery at Pointe-à-Pierre was closed down, the fa­cil­i­ty still sits at the cen­tre of a na­tion­al de­bate. Steel, pipes, tanks, and jet­ties stretch along the Guaracara coast­line, silent but not for­got­ten.

At a time when climb­ing food prices feel like a week­ly rit­u­al and in a Car­ni­val land­scape dom­i­nat­ed by large, high-bud­get mas­quer­ade bands, one mi­ni Car­ni­val band in Bel­mont, bear­ing the name of one of T&T’s most trea­sured band­lead­ers, is chal­leng­ing the norm with a sim­ple but trans­for­ma­tive idea with its Pay What You Can “bonus” of­fer­ing.

The an­nounce­ment by Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of a pro­posed 70 to 80 per cent hike in the price of nat­ur­al gas to its light in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers (LICs) has been the sub­ject of much de­bate over the last three weeks.

Amid grow­ing pub­lic de­bate over the state of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try in T&T, Agos­ti­ni Group CEO Bar­ry Davis has pub­licly dis­missed al­le­ga­tions that the com­pa­ny holds a mo­nop­oly or con­trols an over­whelm­ing share of the lo­cal phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has sig­nalled that Gov­ern­ment will not ac­cept any rec­om­men­da­tion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) that un­der­mines its de­vel­op­ment agen­da for Trinidad and To­ba­go.