Amid con­tin­u­ing ten­sion about for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty, Sco­tia­bank T&T an­nounced yes­ter­day that ef­fec­tive De­cem­ber 1, 2024, it would re­duce the max­i­mum US dol­lar spend­ing lim­it per cal­en­dar month on its cred­it cards un­til fur­ther no­tice.

West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny (Wit­co), yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter tax prof­it of $108.65 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, 27.3 per cent less than the $149.45 mil­lion the Champs Fleurs-based to­bac­co pro­duc­er de­clared for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

More fo­cus needs to be placed on for­eign ex­change earn­ings and what can be done to boost the coun­try’s ex­ports and plug the forex leak­ages in­to the sys­tem. 

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, in­no­va­tion, and ex­pand­ed glob­al reach are some of the things that were dis­cussed at the Carib Brew­ery, bi­en­ni­al dis­trib­u­tors con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency ear­li­er this month. 

Pres­i­dent of the Au­to­mo­bile Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Visham Bab­wah, yes­ter­day called for an in­de­pen­dent body to deal with the on­go­ing short­age of for­eign ex­change, as he said some sort of in­ter­ven­tion and clar­i­ty is need­ed.  

Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Gas­ton Browne is ad­vis­ing that the time has come for a re-eval­u­a­tion and re­align­ment of ho­tel con­ces­sions in the Caribbean to ar­rive at a more eq­ui­table and sus­tain­able in­cen­tive regime that is fair and eq­ui­table to all stake­hold­ers.

Through­out the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund an­nu­al meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton over the past week, it was large­ly not­ed that cen­tral bank gov­er­nors around the world have been placed in an un­en­vi­able po­si­tion.

In the na­tion­al bud­get for the fis­cal year 2025, lo­cal Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (“SMEs”) were not­ed to gen­er­ate rev­enue, cre­ate em­ploy­ment and boost for­eign ex­change earn­ings with non-en­er­gy ex­ports from SMEs be­ing val­ued at US$2.4bil­lon in 2022. With this in mind, the suc­cess and long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of SMEs can be said to be of in­creas­ing im­por­tance in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Econ­o­mist and a for­mer deputy gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank Dr Ter­rence Far­rell is crit­i­cal of the da­ta used in the bud­get for fis­cal year 2025 and al­so the way it was pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic.

In­creas­ing Guardian Life of The Caribbean’s share of the re­gion­al mar­kets in which it op­er­ates is one of the pri­or­i­ties for the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny.

The British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Co. Ltd and Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Co. Ltd. Pol­i­cy Hold­ers Group (BA­COL) has thanked pol­i­cy­hold­ers for “their pa­tience and their sup­port ”as it dis­agreed with the rul­ing by the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) to dis­miss its law­suit brought against the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment.

​Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire says Trinidad and To­ba­go is well placed to avert the prob­lem of ris­ing debt lev­els, even as that is­sued was red­flagged as a glob­al con­cern at this week's In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) meet­ings in Wash­ing­ton DC.