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.

The Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing ad­di­tion­al fast fer­ry sail­ings avail­able on the Trinidad to To­ba­go seabridge in Oc­to­ber, in re­sponse to com­plaints from To­ba­go tourism in­ter­ests that the is­land’s Car­ni­val was at risk of fail­ure be­cause of trans­porta­tion un­cer­tain­ty.

The Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion (CAD) and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing aimed to en­hance con­sumer pro­tec­tion, stream­line com­plaint res­o­lu­tion and ad­vance dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy across the coun­try.

The T&TSe­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) has is­sued its sev­enth of­fi­cial pub­lic alert urg­ing cit­i­zens to ex­er­cise height­ened cau­tion amid an alarm­ing rise in on­line in­vest­ment scams.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd (AM­BL) is propos­ing to con­sol­i­date its bank­ing op­er­a­tions un­der ANSA Bank to cre­ate a new fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny over­see­ing the ANSA McAL Group’s bank­ing, wealth man­age­ment, in­sur­ance and re­gion­al fi­nan­cial ser­vices busi­ness­es.

Exxon­Mo­bil can drill its first ex­plo­ration well in T&T’s ul­tra-deep­wa­ter TTUD-1 block by late 2027 or ear­ly 2028, as the en­er­gy ma­jor ac­cel­er­ates work on what is be­ing close­ly watched as one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant fron­tier ex­plo­ration prospects.

A pro­posed re­gion­al pay­ments sys­tem could low­er the cost and de­lays as­so­ci­at­ed with in­tra-CARI­COM trade, but Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics Roger Ho­sein be­lieves its suc­cess will ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on whether the re­gion ad­dress­es deep­er con­straints af­fect­ing pro­duc­tion, for­eign ex­change and trade.

Ahead of the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, T&T faces a com­plex con­ver­gence of labour mar­ket con­trac­tion and fis­cal re­align­ment.

Cana­di­an man­age­ment con­sul­tant and Man­ag­ing Part­ner of Arche Val­ue Man­age­ment, Mack Fer­gu­son, has pro­duced a per­for­mance list of the largest 35 com­pa­nies (based up­on in­vest­ed cap­i­tal) that are trad­ed on the Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Bar­ba­dos stock ex­changes. The com­pa­nies are eval­u­at­ed on the ba­sis of 2025 stan­dard­ised eco­nom­ic prof­it, with the US Dol­lar has been used as a com­mon ba­sis of per­for­mance analy­sis.

Tourism op­er­a­tors are call­ing for greater in­vest­ment in the sec­tor, but their con­cerns go be­yond the size of the an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd, Charles May­nard, says he is fo­cus­ing on gen­er­at­ing div­i­dends for its share­hold­ers.