The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T) has wel­comed the high-lev­el meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, say­ing the dis­cus­sions could open the way for greater eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Sub­way Trinidad and To­ba­go’s part­ner­ship with Co­pa Air­lines has helped a soon-to-be-mar­ried cou­ple se­cure their hon­ey­moon.

T&T’s grow­ing debt bur­den, per­sis­tent fis­cal deficits and con­tin­ued de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor are rais­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns about the coun­try’s long-term eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty, with econ­o­mists Dr Vanus James and Dr Jamelia Har­ris warn­ing that pol­i­cy­mak­ers face in­creas­ing­ly lim­it­ed op­tions as they pre­pare the 2027 na­tion­al bud­get.

An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt


Dig­i­cel Group has moved to re­ject a re­gion­al me­dia re­port that its chair­man Ra­jeev Suri has been asked to re­sign in­sist­ing that he re­tains the full back­ing of the com­pa­ny’s board and share­hold­ers.

Pro­man is cut­ting head­count as the pro­longed squeeze in Trinidad’s nat­ur­al gas sup­ply hits its op­er­a­tions, with the petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­er warn­ing staff that it does not have enough gas to run all its plants con­sis­tent­ly at full ca­pac­i­ty.

I didn’t get to fin­ish my con­tri­bu­tion in the Sen­ate on Fri­day. We are on­ly giv­en 40 min­utes and not a minute more. We were de­bat­ing the Pro­tec­tion of New Plant Va­ri­eties (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026 (Bill). The Gov­ern­ment has the num­bers. The Op­po­si­tion has six votes. We knew the Bill would pass.

Founder of Boss­es Ten­nis Acad­e­my, Rhon­da Solomon-Mo­hammed, has wit­nessed the vic­to­ries and de­feats of the scores of play­ers she has coached. But win or lose, they al­ways get on and off the courts with the un­der­stand­ing that they must sac­ri­fice to ben­e­fit, by in­vest­ing time and ef­fort in­to per­fect­ing their play­ing and com­pe­ti­tion skills.

Most small busi­ness­es are sit­ting on some­thing valu­able that nev­er ap­pears on a bal­ance sheet. It is not the of­fice, the equip­ment, the in­ven­to­ry or even the com­pa­ny name. It is what the busi­ness has learned.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is of­ten re­duced to build­ing a web­site. The work com­plet­ed for Stream­line Sys­tems went fur­ther. It in­volved re­build­ing the com­pa­ny’s on­line pres­ence and con­nect­ing it to sales, mar­ket­ing, pay­ments, de­liv­ery, cus­tomer man­age­ment, search and re­port­ing.

The Caribbean is be­ing urged to adopt a mod­ern ap­proach to busi­ness to in­crease in­ter­est from in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors and push sus­tain­able growth through­out the re­gion.

On three of the four Thurs­days in June, this col­umn in­ter­ro­gat­ed the de­ci­sion by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s use of se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment process­es to choose con­trac­tors for ma­jor hous­ing projects in Trinidad. The is­sue was high­light­ed: on June 4 un­der the head­line ‘Who will ben­e­fit from the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion projects?’ on June 11, with the head­line, ‘Will the OPR do the right thing?’ and on June 25, when the ques­tion was ‘Dif­fer­ent HDC process, same out­come?’

A vi­able down­stream sec­tor and in­creased nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion are both nec­es­sary for T&T’s en­er­gy fu­ture, US Charge d’Af­faires Philip Kern said, not­ing that each de­pends on the oth­er to sup­port in­vest­ment, growth and long-term in­dus­try sta­bil­i­ty.