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.

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.

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.

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?’

Caribbean Air­lines has com­plet­ed its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2017, 2018 and 2019, clear­ing three years from a nine-year au­dit back­log as the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned car­ri­er moves to bring its fi­nan­cial re­port­ing up to date.

Busi­ness groups have backed ef­forts to over­haul Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tem, but are warn­ing that greater speed and flex­i­bil­i­ty can­not come at the ex­pense of trans­paren­cy, com­pe­ti­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

First Cit­i­zens Group has an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Shar­da Nanan as its new chief in­ter­nal au­di­tor, ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 21, 2026, while con­firm­ing that the act­ing ap­point­ment of Ju­lia Maria Daniel has come to an end.

T&T’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges are in­creas­ing­ly show­ing up in gro­cery carts and su­per­mar­ket aisles, where con­sumers are buy­ing small­er quan­ti­ties and care­ful­ly man­ag­ing every dol­lar spent, says com­men­ta­tor Mar­i­ano Browne.

Cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned TSTT, Vive­ka Par­gass is seek­ing a re­trac­tion and apol­o­gy from the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) over al­le­ga­tions made pub­licly about her, with her at­tor­ney warn­ing that le­gal ac­tion could fol­low if the union does not re­spond with­in 14 days.

The Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT) has elect­ed Kevin Kissoon of Tru Valu Su­per­mar­kets as its new pres­i­dent for the 2026–2028 term.

Every trip to the gro­cery can serve as a re­minder of how vul­ner­a­ble T&T re­mains to glob­al sup­ply chain shocks.

As con­cerns about ris­ing costs for con­sumers con­tin­ue to grow, a team from Ramps Lo­gis­tics is head­ing to the Break­bulk Amer­i­c­as con­fer­ence in Hous­ton next week to ex­plore op­tions to ease that bur­den.