Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) gen­er­at­ed $1.52 bil­lion in prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2026, as the re­gion­al bank­ing group con­tin­ued to grow earn­ings de­spite glob­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) ex­ports to re­gion­al mar­kets edged high­er in 2025, reach­ing 10.7 bil­lion cu­bic me­tres (bcm). The in­crease fol­lowed two con­sec­u­tive years of low­er ex­port vol­umes and re­flect­ed a mod­est re­cov­ery in do­mes­tic LNG pro­duc­tion, even as com­pe­ti­tion in the glob­al mar­ket con­tin­ued to in­ten­si­fy.

Last week, I ex­plained eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion through in­vest­ment port­fo­lio con­struc­tion. The point was pro­duc­ing oil, nat­ur­al gas, LNG, am­mo­nia and methanol does give Trinidad and To­ba­go sev­er­al sources of in­come. How­ev­er, these ma­jor eco­nom­ic en­gines re­main tied to gas avail­abil­i­ty, com­mod­i­ty prices and the same glob­al in­dus­tri­al cy­cle, which means we are chang­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties in the port­fo­lio with­out chang­ing enough of what can cause it to fall. That is why we re­main locked in a boom-bust cy­cle.

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Roodal Mooni­lal and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy Ernesto Ke­sar yes­ter­day held dis­cus­sions with a del­e­ga­tion from the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port of Spain, led by Mr Philip Kern, chargé d’af­faires.

A year ago, a busi­ness con­nec­tion in con­grat­u­lat­ing me for a per­son­al ac­com­plish­ment, de­scribed me as a pra­ca­d­e­m­ic. At the time of his com­ments, the word pra­ca­d­e­m­ic was not fa­mil­iar to me. Us­ing my ap­proach of re­search to ac­quire knowl­edge, I de­cid­ed to look up the de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word pra­ca­d­e­m­ic, sought to find out who qual­i­fies to be called a pra­ca­d­e­m­ic, and to un­der­stand why pra­ca­d­e­mics are valu­able to so­ci­ety.

As more peo­ple en­ter the culi­nary en­tre­pre­neur­ial world, there has been an in­crease in the de­mand for rental of test and com­mer­cial kitchens that pro­vide more work­ing space and are equipped with in­dus­tri­al-grade equip­ment.

Wi­Pay chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ald­wyn Wayne has re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that his com­pa­ny mis­han­dled Gov­ern­ment funds or was re­spon­si­ble for the re­port­ed fail­ure of the on­line fixed penal­ty no­tice pay­ment sys­tem, in­sist­ing that Wi­Pay nei­ther re­ceives nor holds pub­lic mon­ey.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go faces a grow­ing risk of a cred­it rat­ing down­grade, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment is down­play­ing con­cerns raised by Stan­dard & Poor’s (S&P) and fail­ing to ad­dress deep­er weak­ness­es in the econ­o­my.

En­tre­pre­neur­ship is of­ten pre­sent­ed as a race. Start the busi­ness, build the brand, at­tract cus­tomers, make mon­ey and scale, prefer­ably be­fore every­one on so­cial me­dia be­gins ask­ing why you are not yet a mil­lion­aire.

For decades, the Caribbean has re­lied on tourism, en­er­gy, fi­nan­cial ser­vices and mi­gra­tion as path­ways to eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Lit­er­a­cy has an ex­pand­ed mean­ing, and it de­ter­mines how suc­cess­ful you can be as an en­tre­pre­neur. Fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy is about man­ag­ing your knowl­edge of mon­ey mat­ters. It is not what you own or earn. It is about look­ing at your fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments and re­sources and op­ti­mis­ing them.

While Trinidad and To­ba­go’s elec­tion to a seat on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UN­SC) will bring the coun­try pos­i­tive ex­po­sure, it may not nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to im­me­di­ate greater for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) in­to the coun­try.