chair­man of the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC), Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, agree­ing that an­oth­er ce­ment sup­pli­er is need­ed in T&T as he ad­vo­cat­ed that com­pe­ti­tion is the best way to grow an econ­o­my.

The lat­est round of sanc­tions will cost Venezuela bil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue and could re­sult in a new flow of il­le­gal mi­grants, which could cause se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic and so­cial prob­lems in T&T and oth­er neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

In to­day’s fast-paced dig­i­tal land­scape, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) is no longer a fu­tur­is­tic con­cept but a present-day ne­ces­si­ty. Busi­ness­es that fail to in­te­grate AI in­to their mar­ket­ing strate­gies risk falling be­hind in an era when da­ta-dri­ven in­sights, au­toma­tion, and per­son­alised en­gage­ment de­fine suc­cess.

In last week’s com­men­tary in this space, which was head­lined, “Should Govt sell its TSTT shares now?” the pub­lic was re­mind­ed of an an­nounce­ment made by in­com­ing prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young that the Cab­i­net, in March 2022, took a de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish a sub-com­mit­tee that was man­dat­ed to look at TSTT’s cur­rent po­si­tion, whether the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider was fit for pur­pose in the ever-chang­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try and to make rec­om­men­da­tions on what should be done with TSTT.

For the past decade, de­clin­ing oil and gas pro­duc­tion has been a key eco­nom­ic chal­lenge for T&T. Re­vers­ing this trend re­quires in­creased up­stream in­vest­ment, which is cur­rent­ly un­der­way. Sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments are be­ing made in the up­stream oil and gas sec­tor, as well as in re­new­able en­er­gy.

Nine years ago, IDB In­vest was “recre­at­ed” with the in­tent to place more fo­cus on the Caribbean.

The first six months of the T&T Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency Ltd (TT­TI­PA) are not go­ing as smooth­ly as the Gov­ern­ment would have hoped, as sev­er­al work­ers are ag­griev­ed at the fi­nan­cial terms of their tran­si­tion to the new agency.

The long-run­ning bor­der dis­pute be­tween Guyana and Venezuela, which is cur­rent­ly be­fore the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ), flared anew on March 1st. Venezue­lan mil­i­tary as­sets mount­ed an in­cur­sion in­to oil-rich Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters — ma­noeu­vring with the Exxon­Mo­bil-op­er­at­ed off­shore oil field in their line of sight — prompt­ing Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali to de­nounce this lat­est Venezue­lan provo­ca­tion.

As the world cel­e­brates In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the strides made to­ward gen­der equal­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in tra­di­tion­al­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­tries like the ex­trac­tive sec­tor. In 2023, the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI) strength­ened its com­mit­ment to gen­der in­clu­sion by in­tro­duc­ing ad­di­tion­al gen­der-spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sions in­to the EITI Stan­dard.

Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $166.54 mil­lion for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2025, which was an in­crease of 1.38 per cent com­pared to the $164.26 mil­lion it re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

T&T and Japan are seek­ing to de­vel­op fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the mu­tu­al ben­e­fit of both coun­tries.

Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd (Plipde­co) yes­ter­day an­nounced the res­ig­na­tion of its di­rec­tor, Ayan­na Miguel, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to un­der­go sig­nif­i­cant changes.