Over the past 20 years, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor has stag­nat­ed and de­clined, with its GDP con­tri­bu­tion falling be­low 1 per cent in re­cent years as the en­er­gy sec­tor has tak­en cen­tre stage. In the midst of de­clin­ing oil prices in 2015, the Gov­ern­ment pushed for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, but prob­lems in­clud­ing low pro­duc­tion, the ef­fects of cli­mate change, and a lack of fi­nance have re­mained. Small­hold­er farms that are dis­persed and ex­pe­ri­ence ex­pen­sive in­puts, in­ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture, have to con­tend with the con­se­quences of cli­mate change, such as de­creased rain­fall and flood­ing. Our lo­cal com­pet­i­tive­ness and val­ue ad­di­tion have been ham­pered by poor post-har­vest fa­cil­i­ties, a dis­or­gan­ised mar­ket and in­sti­tu­tion­al flaws. Re­liance on food im­ports is made worse by land degra­da­tion, un­pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­suf­fi­cient sup­port for re­search and de­vel­op­ment.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) has for a long time been T&T’s largest and most prof­itable com­pa­ny, op­er­at­ing as a key play­er in the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor, its pri­ma­ry con­trib­u­tor to tax rev­enues and for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

Guyana says re­al eco­nom­ic growth is ex­pect­ed to re­main strong with the oil and gas sec­tor con­tin­u­ing to be the main dri­ver of over­all growth, sup­port­ed by sus­tained dy­namism in the broad­er non-oil econ­o­my.

Lo­cal busi­ness­es sup­port­ing T&T’s back­bone oil and gas sec­tor are warn­ing of a “crip­pling ef­fect” on op­er­a­tions as the coun­try’s per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­age shifts from a mar­ket chal­lenge to a sys­tem-wide con­straint.

At the 2025 T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, then Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed that T&T, is “seek­ing to de­lin­eate the out­er lim­its of the coun­try’s con­ti­nen­tal shelf, be­yond 200 nau­ti­cal miles”, with the prac­ti­cal ob­jec­tive of be­ing “in a po­si­tion to ex­ploit the nat­ur­al re­sources” on that ex­tend­ed por­tion. The state­ment crys­tallised a strate­gic ini­tia­tive that has been qui­et­ly ad­vanc­ing through Unit­ed Na­tions process­es since 2009, but which now car­ries im­pli­ca­tions far be­yond the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of seabed ju­ris­dic­tion.

The Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (PPR­BA) has ex­pressed grave con­cern over com­ments made last week by Fair Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Be­van Nar­i­nesingh re­gard­ing the Com­mis­sion’s ca­pac­i­ty to en­force com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tions. Nar­i­nesingh told the me­dia that the FTC’s en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties had been con­strained by the ab­sence of a board for the past eight months.

Com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es in T&T need to de­vel­op more skills in de­vel­op­ing a plan to deal with the fall­out from ran­somware at­tacks and oth­er cy­ber­crimes.

This was the view shared by In­spec­tor of Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions for the Cen­tral Bank, Michelle Fran­cis-Pan­tor, dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Fi­nance and Le­gal Af­fairs on Fri­day. The JSC served as an ‘In­quiry in­to the su­per­vi­so­ry and pru­den­tial over­sight of cred­it unions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Min­istry of Fi­nance said yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment's US$1 bil­lion 10-year se­nior un­se­cured sov­er­eign bond at­tract­ed de­mand for rough­ly 2.5 times the fi­nal of­fer size.

Pos­i­tive mo­men­tum is build­ing in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor in 2026, dri­ven by grow­ing ex­pec­ta­tions as more oil and gas projects are sched­uled to come on stream this year and in 2027.

One year be­fore T&T gained in­de­pen­dence from Great Britain, a lit­tle air­line called Wind­ward Is­lands Air­ways In­ter­na­tion­al NV (Winair) was found­ed in Sint Maarten. One year lat­er, it spread its wings and be­gan com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions. Now, 64 years lat­er, the Caribbean’s old­est air­line is spread­ing its wings once again and launch­ing flights to Trinidad.

Vir­tu­al as­sets in­clud­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cies, and vir­tu­al as­set ac­tiv­i­ties, con­tin­ue to gain in promi­nence, as con­fi­dence in the un­der­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy in­creas­es, sup­port­ed by a grow­ing dis­trust in tra­di­tion­al sys­tems. Trinidad and To­ba­go (‘T&T’) has re­cent­ly for­malised its at­tempt to be­gin reg­u­la­tion of the vir­tu­al as­set sec­tor, with the re­cent pas­sage of the Vir­tu­al As­sets and Vir­tu­al As­set Ser­vice Providers Act, Act No. 12 of 2025 (the ‘VASP Act’), which was as­sent­ed to on 23 De­cem­ber 2025.