The Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to halt elec­tric­i­ty from flow­ing on­to the na­tion­al grid from T&T’s largest so­lar farm has ig­nit­ed fierce crit­i­cism from for­mer min­is­ters, en­er­gy ex­perts and re­new­able en­er­gy ad­vo­cates, all warn­ing the coun­try risks un­der­min­ing its en­er­gy tran­si­tion and wast­ing an in­vest­ment that was ex­pect­ed to trans­form the elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor.

The re­cent­ly in­tro­duced Blue Wa­ters Pre­mi­um Sparkling Wa­ter will be pre­pared for ex­port soon.

Days af­ter the of­fi­cial open­ing of the Pen­ny­wise Plaza at the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Trinci­ty Mall has an­nounced a ma­jor re­struc­tur­ing plan.

But last Thurs­day, on the open­ing day of Spi­der-Man: Brand New Day, the lo­cal cin­e­ma in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­enced some­thing not seen for much of the last decade.

The Gov­ern­ment has paid more than $293 mil­lion in fu­el sub­si­dies for au­to­mo­tive diesel so far this year, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries in a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­sponse.

GraceKennedy (Trinidad & To­ba­go) (GK­TT) has been reg­is­tered as a Pay­ment Ser­vice Provider (PSP) in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

With Eman­ci­pa­tion Day just past, imag­ine an is­land with a church, a ceme­tery and chil­dren run­ning be­neath co­conut trees. Fam­i­lies have lived there for gen­er­a­tions and their dead lie with­in earshot of the sea. Then, in dis­tant cap­i­tals, men un­fold a map and de­cide that the is­land is strate­gi­cal­ly in­dis­pens­able. Its peo­ple are told, per­haps not in words, but un­mis­tak­ably in pol­i­cy, that their homes ob­struct se­cu­ri­ty, their his­to­ry can be fold­ed in­to a suit­case, and their be­long­ings mat­ter less than a mil­i­tary base.

For­eign ex­change short­ages, a lim­it­ed do­mes­tic mar­ket and the rapid rise of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence are forc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es to re­think how they com­pete. Busi­ness con­sul­tant Ger­ald Llanos be­lieves com­pa­nies that con­tin­ue re­ly­ing sole­ly on the lo­cal econ­o­my risk falling be­hind, ar­gu­ing that earn­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy over­seas and em­brac­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­dence (AI) have be­come busi­ness ne­ces­si­ties rather than op­tion­al strate­gies.

Last month’s earth­quake which dev­as­tat­ed north­ern Venezuela leav­ing over 5,000 dead and bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age must be a wake up call for T&T.

The open­ing of Pen­ny­wise’s newest and largest re­tail lo­ca­tion at Pen­ny­wise Plaza at the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate has be­come an­oth­er sig­nal that busi­ness­es are re­gain­ing con­fi­dence in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said yes­ter­day.

Con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion be­tween le­gal no­tices and in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion codes led to last’s week’s sud­den re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the mild hy­brids.

The yacht­ing sec­tor is step­ping up its dri­ve to at­tract ex­port-ori­ent­ed in­vest­ment, with a new elec­tron­ic clear­ance sys­tem.