Over the last decade, un­pre­dictable and rapid change in the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment, has pre­sent­ed ex­tra­or­di­nary chal­lenges for com­pa­nies of all sizes. These changes have forced com­pa­nies to re­ex­am­ine the mod­el of en­tre­pre­neur­ship. The COVID-19 virus, suc­ces­sive wars, tech­no­log­i­cal changes, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, and oth­er glob­al de­vel­op­ments, have re­sult­ed in a shift from a prof­it on­ly dri­ven-mod­el to one that places so­ci­etal val­ues at the fore­front of strat­e­gy. In­clu­siv­i­ty, so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, fair­ness, in­equal­i­ty, cli­mate change and en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty are now at the heart of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process. The tra­di­tion­al style of en­tre­pre­neur­ship has been en­hanced by adding a hu­man el­e­ment. This ap­proach re­ferred to as hu­mane en­tre­pre­neur­ship in­flu­ences a com­pa­ny’s core pur­pose, its lead­er­ship, peo­ple en­gage­ment, and op­er­a­tions styles.

Venezue­lan en­er­gy con­sul­tant Dr Ein­stein Mil­lán Ar­cia is ac­cus­ing T&T’s Gov­ern­ment of down­play­ing the true ex­tent of the en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the oil three weeks ago.

ANSA McAL Group CEO An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III has giv­en as­sur­ances to share­hold­ers that div­i­dend pay­ments will be re­in­stat­ed at the end of the three-year mora­to­ri­um.

Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Caribbean Air­lines Ltd will stop fly­ing to three des­ti­na­tions and re­duce ser­vice to two more from June 1, as the air­line seeks to cut loss-gen­er­at­ing routes, ef­fec­tive­ly re­vers­ing the route ex­pan­sion un­der­tak­en by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Cen­tral Bank’s long-await­ed Pay­ment Sys­tems and Ser­vices Bill is be­ing wel­comed by fin­tech op­er­a­tors as a ma­jor step to­ward mod­ernising Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fi­nan­cial sys­tem, but in­dus­try play­ers are warn­ing that parts of the leg­is­la­tion could un­der­mine the very in­no­va­tion it is try­ing to en­cour­age.
At the heart of the de­bate are con­cerns over cap­i­tal re­quire­ments, re­stric­tions on mul­ti-cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions, the ab­sence of open bank­ing man­dates, and what fin­tech op­er­a­tors de­scribe as a lack of for­ward-look­ing pol­i­cy around blockchain and sta­ble­coins.
The draft leg­is­la­tion has trig­gered a se­ries of con­sul­ta­tions by the Cen­tral Bank over the past two weeks, in­volv­ing lo­cal and re­gion­al fin­tech com­pa­nies, pay­ment providers, and tech­nol­o­gy firms as reg­u­la­tors seek feed­back be­fore the frame­work is fi­nalised.
At the for­mal me­dia launch of the con­sul­ta­tions on Wednes­day, founder of WamNow Tech­nolo­gies Mark Pereira de­scribed the pro­posed frame­work as a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment, but ar­gued that pol­i­cy­mak­ers were not ful­ly ac­count­ing for the pace of tech­no­log­i­cal change.
“So we do wel­come it, for sure. The one thing is, if we’re go­ing to do it, be­cause what they al­lud­ed to is some­thing they want to take us for­ward over the next five years, then we re­al­ly need to as­sess the cur­rent land­scape and do things right,” Pereira said.
“Giv­en that we have an un­prece­dent­ed ele­phant in the room, which is AI and blockchain and tech­nol­o­gy, we re­al­ly should look at this frame­work and think about the next decade and I think that’s what’s not be­ing done.”
Pereira not­ed that T&T nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly had a ded­i­cat­ed pay­ments law and ar­gued the cur­rent bill rep­re­sent­ed a ma­jor con­sol­i­da­tion of frag­ment­ed fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions.
“We nev­er re­al­ly had a ded­i­cat­ed pay­ment law. So this Cen­tral Bank bill and these fi­nan­cial acts are con­sol­i­dat­ing every­thing in­to a mod­ern frame­work, which is a ma­jor achieve­ment mov­ing for­ward, but we def­i­nite­ly need to fu­ture-proof it.”

ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd (AM­BL) has re­port­ed a strong fi­nan­cial per­for­mance for the past fis­cal year, dri­ven by growth in its loan port­fo­lio and non-in­ter­est in­come, ac­cord­ing to man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Stephen Grell.

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics, Roger Ho­sein, has dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the shut­down of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) had a dam­ag­ing ef­fect on T&T’s labour mar­ket, say­ing avail­able da­ta does not sup­port claims of wide­spread job loss or eco­nom­ic fall­out.

Mem­ber­ship shop­ping com­pa­ny PriceS­mart Clubs Ltd has won a law­suit against the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) over its move to change from its pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cept­ed method­ol­o­gy for con­sid­er­ing for­eign ex­change loss­es when cal­cu­lat­ing cor­po­ra­tion tax.

Last Thurs­day, May 14, the rat­ing agency Moody’s is­sued a news re­lease, known as a rat­ing ac­tion, an­nounc­ing that it had with­drawn its cred­it rat­ing for the whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) due to in­suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion. Moody’s with­drew NGC’s Ba2 cor­po­rate fam­i­ly rat­ing, ba2 base­line cred­it as­sess­ment and Ba2 se­nior un­se­cured notes.

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai has stressed that T&T “can­not wait any longer” to mod­ernise its pay­ment sys­tem, as he opened the launch of a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the long-an­tic­i­pat­ed Draft Pay­ment Sys­tems and Ser­vices Bill and Reg­u­la­tions aimed at strength­en­ing fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, en­cour­ag­ing in­no­va­tion, and ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal pay­ments.

There has been a great deal of com­men­tary about Moody’s with­draw­al of its rat­ing from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go. That com­men­tary and con­tro­ver­sy was in­evitable. NGC is not an or­di­nary com­pa­ny. It sits at the cen­tre of the coun­try’s gas econ­o­my, the petro­chem­i­cal es­tate, the LNG chain and, by ex­ten­sion, the fis­cal for­tunes of the coun­try. When a rat­ing agency with­draws from such an in­sti­tu­tion, the mat­ter can­not be treat­ed as a rou­tine ad­min­is­tra­tive oc­cur­rence.

The Caribbean rum in­dus­try is cur­rent­ly nav­i­gat­ing a pe­ri­od of ad­just­ment as pro­duc­ers con­tend with post-pan­dem­ic eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, evolv­ing trade con­di­tions, and un­even de­mand across key in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.