A 6.8 mag­ni­tude earth­quake shook east­ern Cu­ba on Sun­day, af­ter weeks of hur­ri­canes and black­outs that have left many on the is­land reel­ing.

Run­ning a com­pa­ny is not easy, as there are many ad­just­ments and chal­lenges to over­come along its jour­ney.

Two leg­ends who have been, and con­tin­ue to be, an in­te­gral part of this coun­try’s busi­ness land­scape, were ho­n­oured when the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­mence host­ed its an­nu­al Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness awards on Thurs­day night.

The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment says the In­land Rev­enue De­part­ment (IRD) has made a de­mand for an amount ex­ceed­ing EC$24 mil­lion (about US$9 mil­lion) in tax­es col­lect­ed by the San­dals ho­tel here owned by the Ja­maica-based San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al (SRI) for the pe­ri­od 2017 and 2021.

The T&T Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (TTUTC) achieved an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone on Thurs­day, when it launched the UTC Glob­al Bal­anced Fund Ltd (UTC GBFL) to the peo­ple of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (Wit­co) an­nounced yes­ter­day that Raoul Glynn “ceased to be the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor” of the Champs Fleur-based cig­a­rette man­u­fac­tur­er with ef­fect from Oc­to­ber 31, 2024.

T&T is set to get a sig­nif­i­cant boost in its tourism and eco­nom­ic sec­tors fol­low­ing news that two new air­lines are due to start fly­ing to T&T in the near fu­ture.

The new ter­mi­nal at ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ex­pan­sion project could be com­plet­ed soon­er than orig­i­nal­ly planned.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd record­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of $118.84 mil­lion for the first nine months of its 2024 fi­nan­cial year, a 24.4 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $95.4 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2023. 

Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell says he is un­able to com­ment on the arrange­ment that Glob­al Pe­tro­le­um Group re­cent­ly signed with Nige­ria’s Ocean­gate Oil and Gas En­gi­neer­ing com­pa­ny to de­vel­op the is­land’s oil and gas re­serves.

The for­eign ex­change is­sue has more to do with in­creas­ing the over­all size of the pie than how it is al­lo­cat­ed. That’s ac­cord­ing to NCB Mer­chant Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go) (NCBMBTT) chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Mar­li Creese.

Ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change is a ma­jor headache for many En­er­gy Cham­ber mem­bers com­pa­nies, es­pe­cial­ly small to medi­um-sized ser­vice com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors. These com­pa­nies need for­eign ex­change to pro­cure equip­ment and sup­plies as well as to pay for things like in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion fees and spe­cialised train­ing. Just like com­pa­nies out­side of the en­er­gy sec­tor, many of our mem­bers are jug­gling var­i­ous ac­counts with dif­fer­ent banks to be able to ac­cess the for­eign ex­change that they re­quire.