The Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) has wel­comed re­cent talks in­volv­ing the Gov­ern­ment, the Cen­tral Bank, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the bank­ing sec­tor, de­scrib­ing the en­gage­ment as im­por­tant to strength­en­ing the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial sys­tem and sup­port­ing eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

Ter­rence Kalloo has been ap­point­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills Lim­it­ed (NFM).

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­PA) is set to meet with Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, on Mon­day to dis­cuss a range of is­sues af­fect­ing the quar­ry­ing and ag­gre­gate sec­tor.
In a news re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, TTA­PA said it wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty for con­struc­tive en­gage­ment and open di­a­logue with the Min­istry on sev­er­al crit­i­cal mat­ters im­pact­ing op­er­a­tors across the in­dus­try.
The dis­cus­sions are ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on li­cens­ing process­es, reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion, roy­al­ties, op­er­a­tional chal­lenges, stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion, and the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the sec­tor.
TTA­PA said it re­mains hope­ful that the meet­ing will lead to prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions, im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to­ward es­tab­lish­ing a fair, trans­par­ent, and work­able frame­work for the ac­qui­si­tion of Pro­cess­ing Li­cences for the sand and grav­el in­dus­try.
The planned talks come days af­ter the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries is­sued “hold over” let­ters to 25 op­er­a­tors in the min­er­als sec­tor, al­low­ing them to con­tin­ue min­ing and pro­cess­ing ac­tiv­i­ties while ap­pli­ca­tions for re­newed li­cences are be­ing re­viewed.
The min­istry said the let­ters were is­sued on May 22 to bona fide op­er­a­tors with ac­tive op­er­a­tions whose min­ing and pro­cess­ing li­cences had ex­pired and were be­ing re­newed.
Un­der the arrange­ment, op­er­a­tors will be per­mit­ted to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing un­der the same terms and con­di­tions as their pre­vi­ous li­cences for one year.
The min­istry said the mea­sure was in­tend­ed to en­sure an ad­e­quate sup­ply of min­er­als at af­ford­able prices to sup­port the coun­try’s in­fra­struc­ture and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.
It al­so point­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s Re­vi­tal­iza­tion Blue­print pro­gramme, in­tro­duced in No­vem­ber 2025, which in­cludes 129 ma­jor con­struc­tion projects across T&T.
The min­istry main­tained that main­tain­ing a sta­ble sup­ply of ag­gre­gate ma­te­ri­als is crit­i­cal to in­creas­ing con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty and keep­ing prices man­age­able for con­sumers and con­trac­tors.
TTA­PA re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to law­ful op­er­a­tions, re­spon­si­ble in­dus­try prac­tices, work­er safe­ty, and con­tin­ued con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­ture.
The as­so­ci­a­tion said fur­ther up­dates would be pro­vid­ed fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of Mon­day’s meet­ing.

Re­gion­al bank­ing ex­ec­u­tives and share­hold­ers are view­ing the US$1.794 bil­lion agree­ment for But­ter­field Bank to ac­quire Cana­di­an Im­pe­r­i­al Bank of Com­merce’s 91.7 per cent stake in CIBC Caribbean Bank as a ma­jor shift in the Caribbean fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

In­dia’s grow­ing com­mer­cial ties with T&T come at a time when south-east Asian coun­try is one of the world’s emerg­ing eco­nom­ic pow­ers.

Huawei Cloud’s MaaS roll­out in Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica is more than an­oth­er tech­nol­o­gy launch. It is an ear­ly sig­nal of how busi­ness com­pe­ti­tion is chang­ing glob­al­ly.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj says the Gov­ern­ment is tar­get­ing an in­crease in ex­ports from US$2 bil­lion to US$4 bil­lion as part of ef­forts to strength­en the non-en­er­gy sec­tor and dri­ve eco­nom­ic growth.

By my cal­cu­la­tion, the Com­pos­ite In­dex of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) is up by 6.28 per cent for the year to Tues­day (May 26) and the All T&T In­dex in­creased by 5.50 per cent in that pe­ri­od.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Green Fund con­tin­ued to grow in the fi­nan­cial year 2025, with the bal­ance reach­ing TT$12.86 bil­lion as of Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, ac­cord­ing to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port on the Pub­lic Ac­counts for 2025.

Man­disa Box­ill has tak­en many chances on her­self and her abil­i­ties. She has act­ed, tu­tored math, bar­tend­ed, done food and drinks re­views, and com­pet­ed as a body­builder. This time around she is putting her mon­ey where her mouth is, and is adding busi­ness own­er to her port­fo­lio.

Trinidad and To­ba­go stands at a crit­i­cal eco­nom­ic cross­roads. Tra­di­tion­al growth dri­vers are un­der in­creas­ing pres­sure, while the struc­ture of glob­al val­ue cre­ation has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed. For decades, much of our eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty was built around ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries and nat­ur­al re­sources such as co­coa, sug­ar, oil and gas. To­day, how­ev­er, the high­est lev­els of val­ue are no longer gen­er­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly through pro­duc­tion it­self, but through re­search and de­vel­op­ment (R&D), in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP), de­sign, down­stream mar­ket con­trol, and tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion.

Moth­er­hood in Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ways car­ried deep cul­tur­al mean­ing, but in 2026, the role of the mod­ern Trin­bag­on­ian moth­er has evolved in­to some­thing even more com­plex. She is care­giv­er, fi­nan­cial plan­ner, emo­tion­al an­chor, de­ci­sion-mak­er and of­ten the pri­ma­ry ar­chi­tect of house­hold sur­vival. A re­cent na­tion­al study of 1,000 moth­ers and pri­ma­ry care­givers across T&T, con­duct­ed by Lu­cent Re­search Lim­it­ed in May 2026, paints a vivid pic­ture of women car­ry­ing im­mense re­spon­si­bil­i­ty while re­main­ing deeply hope­ful for the fu­ture of their chil­dren.