The Caribbean could face a sharp in­crease in food prices with­in the next three months, with the im­pact like­ly to reach the re­gion soon­er than ex­pect­ed, ac­cord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Wayne Gan­pat.

The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AM­CHAM T&T) has signed a strate­gic agree­ment with the Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence In­no­va­tion Cen­tre (AI­IC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, in a move aimed at ac­cel­er­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence adop­tion and pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment across Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean.

In­creas­ing tax­es on to­bac­co and re­lat­ed prod­ucts may un­in­ten­tion­al­ly in­cen­tivise a surge in the il­lic­it trade mar­ket with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go, says Matías O’Far­rell, vice-pres­i­dent of cor­po­rate af­fairs for Latin Amer­i­ca and Cana­da at Philip Mor­ris In­ter­na­tion­al (PMI).

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has paid trib­ute to for­mer pres­i­dent Wayne Yip Choy, de­scrib­ing him as a stead­fast ad­vo­cate for the coun­try’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and a leader whose in­flu­ence helped shape the in­dus­try over decades.

A crit­i­cal piece of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy fu­ture has now moved from plan­ning to ex­e­cu­tion, with the suc­cess­ful trans­port of ma­jor in­dus­tri­al equip­ment for the Man­a­tee Plus project—an op­er­a­tion that un­der­scores both the ur­gency and scale of in­vest­ment now un­fold­ing in the sec­tor.

Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL Ltd (TTNGL) has de­clared a spe­cial in­ter­im div­i­dend of $1.00 per share, end­ing a near four-year drought for more than 11,400 share­hold­ers and trig­ger­ing a $154.8 mil­lion cash in­jec­tion in­to the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

The Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion has warned busi­ness­es against us­ing glob­al un­cer­tain­ty as cov­er for un­jus­ti­fied price in­creas­es, sig­nalling clos­er scruti­ny of mar­ket be­hav­iour as it moves to en­force com­pli­ance un­der the Fair Trad­ing Act, Chap 81:13.

As the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion around to­bac­co harm-re­duc­tion in­ten­si­fies, Trinidad and To­ba­go is emerg­ing as a fo­cal point for shift­ing con­sumer habits and the on­go­ing bat­tle against il­lic­it trade.

T&T’s po­ten­tial re­bound in the oil and gas sec­tor in the near fu­ture, as well as con­tin­ued en­er­gy sec­tor de­vel­op­ment in Guyana and Suri­name, has led to split for­eign as­sess­ments of eco­nom­ic growth and re­cov­ery in the Caribbean for 2026 to 2027.

When com­mer­cial ves­sels re­cent­ly be­gan di­vert­ing thou­sands of miles around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid at­tacks in the Red Sea, the world was re­mind­ed how frag­ile glob­al ship­ping routes can be.

Econ­o­mists and a se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant are warn­ing that, de­spite changes to Venezuela’s lead­er­ship in re­cent times, il­le­gal mi­gra­tion from Venezuela to T&T will con­tin­ue.

The prospect of Guyanese crude be­ing re­fined in Trinidad and To­ba­go has emerged as the cor­ner­stone of a high-stakes en­er­gy blue­print un­veiled by Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali.