Long be­fore her doors of­fi­cial­ly open at 7:30 am, Mar­sha Pe­ters (not her re­al name) is al­ready stand­ing in the cen­tre aisle of her small min­i­mart in Carn­bee.

Have you ever heard of the term “Fed Speak?” This re­lates to the lan­guage used by the US Fed­er­al Re­serve in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the fi­nan­cial mar­kets and there is an en­tire field of analy­sis that goes in­to de­ci­pher­ing what is meant by what is said.

If you fol­low glob­al busi­ness head­lines, you would think ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence has al­ready rewired the econ­o­my. Com­pa­nies are re­struc­tur­ing, job cuts are be­ing blamed on au­toma­tion and ex­ec­u­tives talk about “do­ing more with less” as if it is a new op­er­at­ing sys­tem for work.

Ex­perts from the field of busi­ness and acad­e­mia all share the view that while the next na­tion­al cen­sus is long over­due, up-to-date in­for­ma­tion is need­ed for eco­nom­ic plan­ning and de­vel­op­ment.

Af­ter 14 years at its cur­rent ad­dress on Cipri­ani Bou­ve­lard in Port-of-Spain, Town Restau­rant & Bar is prepar­ing to turn the page, but not close the book.In a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, the restau­rant an­nounced that Sat­ur­day will be its last day at the lo­ca­tion it has oc­cu­pied for over a decade.

To­day, ten years lat­er, the own­er of T De Roche Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices is get­ting ready to launch Fi­nan­cial Re­set: from Bondage to Break­through, a pro­gramme and a plat­form through which she will teach peo­ple how to get out of debt.

Last week in this space, un­der the head­line “Is Govt at­tempt­ing to stymie non-en­er­gy sec­tor growth?” this col­umn de­scribed as “con­testable” the opin­ion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) team that vis­it­ed T&T this month that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is “striv­ing to lift non-en­er­gy growth through greater em­pha­sis on im­prov­ing the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, en­cour­ag­ing trade and for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.”

In a scathing cri­tique of the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial com­pli­ance, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo said the Eu­ro­pean Union’s (EU) black­list of non-co­op­er­a­tive ju­ris­dic­tions was far more than a "harm­less ad­min­is­tra­tive la­bel."

In 2026, re­mote work is no longer a trend or a perk — it is a per­ma­nent pil­lar of the glob­al econ­o­my. For T&T, this shift rep­re­sents one of the most prac­ti­cal path­ways to eco­nom­ic re­silience, for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion and ca­reer mo­bil­i­ty with­out mass mi­gra­tion.

Pro­fes­sion­al rel­e­vance in to­day’s en­vi­ron­ment is no longer se­cured by qual­i­fi­ca­tions alone. De­grees and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions re­main es­sen­tial, but in a world de­fined by rapid change, tech­no­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion, and ris­ing ex­pec­ta­tions, they are on­ly the foun­da­tion. Sus­tained rel­e­vance now de­mands a de­lib­er­ate com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ous learn­ing, in­ten­tion­al brand build­ing and ac­tive en­gage­ment with cred­i­ble pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ties.

As the glob­al eco­nom­ic map is be­ing re­drawn, for the first time in gen­er­a­tions the com­pass is point­ing de­ci­sive­ly to­ward New Del­hi, Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon, the first pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go-In­dia Busi­ness Fed­er­a­tion (TTIBF), ob­served, de­scrib­ing In­dia’s evo­lu­tion from a cul­tur­al touch­stone in­to what he called “a US$4.6 tril­lion jug­ger­naut.”

Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) has ad­vised the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change that its sub­sidiary, Readymix (West In­dies) Lim­it­ed (RML), will per­ma­nent­ly shut down its ag­gre­gates and ready-mix op­er­a­tions with ef­fect from March 31, 2026.