T&T’s on­go­ing for­eign ex­change (forex) short­age, while pre­sent­ing im­me­di­ate chal­lenges like de­layed pay­ments and price fluc­tu­a­tions, can be strate­gi­cal­ly mit­i­gat­ed by shift­ing pro­cure­ment fo­cus to­ward the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

The pri­vate sec­tor is call­ing for greater con­sul­ta­tion with the gov­ern­ment as there con­tin­ues to be un­cer­tain­ty about pol­i­cy di­rec­tion.

An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Gary Hunt said the com­pa­ny is in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports that a for­mer se­nior An­gos­tu­ra em­ploy­ee has launched her own ver­sion of the com­pa­ny’s fa­mous Aro­mat­ic Bit­ters.

The Moody’s rat­ings agency yes­ter­day kept the Gov­ern­ment’s longterm lo­cal and for­eign cur­ren­cy is­suer and se­nior un­se­cured rat­ings at Ba2, but changed the out­look to neg­a­tive to re­flect what it views as short-term down­side risks.

CIBC Caribbean Bank yes­ter­day re­port­ed net in­come for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31 of US$159.71 mil­lion, a de­cline of 42.4 per cent com­pared with the prof­it of US$277.51 the bank de­clared in its 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

Ke­ston How­ell is the new ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT).

The out­look for em­ploy­ment in T&T’s food ser­vices sec­tor has shift­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in the wake of the 2026 bud­get state­ment, which in­tro­duced high­er ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

A Cen­tral Bank re­port is­sued yes­ter­day states that in­di­ca­tors mon­i­tored by the Cen­tral Bank sug­gest that eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty re­bound­ed in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2025, while head­line in­fla­tion, mea­sured by the CSO’s Con­sumer Price In­dex (CPI), slid be­tween May and Oc­to­ber 2025 and there was a re­duc­tion in the de­mand for for­eign ex­change.

In a year that saw sev­er­al changes in its lead­er­ship, the First Cit­i­zens Group has re­port­ed in­creased prof­its for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2025.

The In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency (IEA) has been track­ing fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sions (FIDs) for new LNG ex­port projects across the world and has pub­lished liq­ue­fac­tion ca­pac­i­ty ad­di­tions through 2030. At present, liq­ue­fac­tion ca­pac­i­ty is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 670 bcm/y but be­tween 2025 and 2030 it is ex­pect­ed that more than 300 bcm/yr of new LNG ex­port ca­pac­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to come on­line from projects that have al­ready reached fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion (FID) or are un­der con­struc­tion, mark­ing the largest wave of ca­pac­i­ty ad­di­tions to date.

In T&T, Christ­mas is more than a hol­i­day; it is an eco­nom­ic event of na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance. From Paramin to Scar­bor­ough, the fes­tive sea­son shapes re­tail per­for­mance, dri­ves non-en­er­gy growth and in­creas­ing­ly ex­pos­es the fi­nan­cial strain fac­ing house­holds.

The in­tro­duc­tion of the land­lord busi­ness sur­charge un­der the Fi­nance Bill, 2025, has sparked in­tense na­tion­al de­bate, as lead­ing voic­es—in­clud­ing econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, As­so­ci­a­tion of Re­al Es­tate Agents (AREA) Pres­i­dent Sal­ly Singh and the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) pres­i­dent Di­anne Joseph—warn that while the mea­sure aims to strength­en Gov­ern­ment rev­enue and pro­mote tax eq­ui­ty, it risks deep­en­ing fi­nan­cial strain with­in an al­ready frag­ile rental hous­ing mar­ket.