Massy Hold­ings Ltd chair­man Robert Ri­ley has at­trib­uted the group’s first-quar­ter per­for­mance to dis­ci­plined ex­e­cu­tion across the port­fo­lio, as he out­lined in the com­pa­ny’s unau­dit­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the three months end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025.
Ri­ley said the group de­liv­ered a strong start to fis­cal 2026, with rev­enue, EBIT­DA, and earn­ings from con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions all record­ing year-on-year im­prove­ment.

Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin said yes­ter­day he sub­mit­ted an up­grad­ed ver­sion of his Streets of the World con­cept to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (UDe­COTT) be­fore the in­vi­ta­tions for Ex­pres­sions of In­ter­est for the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print closed yes­ter­day.

ANSA McAL, one of T&T’s largest pri­vate-sec­tor com­pa­nies, said yes­ter­day that the group was placed “un­der com­mer­cial duress” by State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), which im­posed a 77 per cent in­crease in the price of nat­ur­al gas to ANSA’s Carib Glass sub­sidiary in Jan­u­ary.

Shell Glob­al CEO Wael Sawan has placed Venezuela and the pend­ing US sanc­tions ap­provals at the top of the com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al pri­or­i­ties, sig­nalling that off­shore gas de­vel­op­ments could soon be tied di­rect­ly in­to T&T’s en­er­gy sys­tem.

Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) has amend­ed two of its ma­jor loan agree­ments in a move that comes just days af­ter the com­pa­ny con­firmed a 15 per cent in­crease in ce­ment prices.

Over the last two decades, T&T com­pa­nies from sec­tors in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, en­er­gy ser­vices, the cre­ative sec­tor, tech­nol­o­gy, and fi­nance have so­lid­i­fied their po­si­tions as lo­cal and re­gion­al play­ers. This suc­cess of­ten de­fined by rev­enues, al­so in­clude in­creased cus­tomers, new mar­kets or new and en­hanced prod­ucts or ser­vices.

By any se­ri­ous mea­sure, T&T’s stock mar­ket is in trou­ble. Not cycli­cal trou­ble. Not a short-term cor­rec­tion, but struc­tur­al trou­ble.

Car­ni­val, long hailed as the soul of T&T’s cul­ture, is in­creas­ing­ly recog­nised as one of the na­tion’s most pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic en­gines—an in­tri­cate ser­vices ecosys­tem that dri­ves tourism, cre­ativ­i­ty, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and glob­al de­mand for the coun­try’s cul­tur­al ex­per­tise.

For decades, the eco­nom­ic nar­ra­tive of T&T has been dom­i­nat­ed by the ebb and flow of the en­er­gy sec­tor. While oil and gas have long been the ti­tans of rev­enue, a qui­et gi­ant has steadi­ly grown to form the true back­bone of the na­tion­al econ­o­my. As we look to­ward the da­ta from 2023 through 2025, a new re­al­i­ty is crys­tal clear: the ser­vices sec­tor is not mere­ly a sup­port­ing play­er; it is the largest com­po­nent of the T&T econ­o­my and its work­force.

Car­ni­val’s con­tri­bu­tion ex­tends well be­yond cul­tur­al pride. It is a com­plex eco­nom­ic sys­tem that gen­er­ates jobs, dri­ves for­eign ex­change and sus­tains en­tire cre­ative in­dus­tries when prop­er­ly sup­port­ed, pan­el­lists agreed dur­ing Term Fi­nance’s Well­ness Wednes­day we­bi­nar, Car­ni­val & Cul­ture – Fu­elling Eco­nom­ic Growth in T&T.

Of­ten times in a dis­cus­sion around stock mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ty there is ref­er­ence to a “herd men­tal­i­ty”. This is the ten­den­cy to fol­low an es­tab­lished group or pat­tern of be­hav­ior with­out the crit­i­cal think­ing that an evolv­ing sit­u­a­tion would de­mand.

In this space on Jan­u­ary 15, 2026, un­der the head­line, ‘When will T&T’s for­eign re­serves run out?’ I re­port­ed the fol­low­ing;