Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics, Roger Ho­sein is con­fi­dent that T&T can har­ness Venezue­lan labour and turn it in­to T&T’s next en­gine of growth.

Last Thurs­day, T&T’s Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Jear­lene John and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­liv­ered ad­dress­es at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, rolling out the Gov­ern­ment’s huge­ly am­bi­tious, and po­ten­tial­ly trans­for­ma­tion­al, vi­sion, called the Trinidad and To­ba­go Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print: Phase II of the na­tion­al re­cruit­ment dri­ve.

The long-an­tic­i­pat­ed restart of T&T’s re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions is inch­ing clos­er to re­al­i­ty, with Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal con­firm­ing that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains on sched­ule to re­ceive a crit­i­cal re­port by the end of No­vem­ber.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day raised con­cerns about un­usu­al trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in­volv­ing shares of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings (FCGFH), the par­ent com­pa­ny of First Cit­i­zens.
In a post on X, the plat­form for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter, Im­bert said “some­thing sin­is­ter” ap­peared to be hap­pen­ing with the price of FCGFH shares on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change since April 28.

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (RFHL) yes­ter­day an­nounced that the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group achieved a prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers of $2.2 bil­lion for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025.

The De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF) has an­nounced a US$40 bil­lion in­vest­ment over the next five years to fi­nance sus­tain­able growth and strength­en cli­mate ac­tion, with em­pha­sis on a just en­er­gy tran­si­tion, wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty, sus­tain­able mo­bil­i­ty, agri­cul­tur­al pros­per­i­ty and the con­ser­va­tion of key strate­gic ecosys­tems for the plan­et such as the Ama­zon, Patag­o­nia, high-moun­tain wet­lands and man­groves.

In a move to deep­en com­mer­cial ties and un­lock new ex­port op­por­tu­ni­ties, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has launched a trade mis­sion to Chile from No­vem­ber 10 to 14.

Busi­ness­man Arthur Lok Jack was yes­ter­day hailed for his courage to make tough de­ci­sions as well as his be­lief in re­gion­al growth.

Last week’s wave of pub­lic anx­i­ety over the ru­mour of re­gion­al con­flict may have sub­sided for now, but it re­vealed how swift­ly per­cep­tion can shift to pan­ic. In a mat­ter of hours, so­cial me­dia spec­u­la­tion led to long queues and bulk buy­ing at some su­per­mar­kets, not be­cause sup­plies were tru­ly threat­ened, but be­cause peo­ple feared they might be.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon is ex­pect­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s em­ploy­ment dri­ve to cre­ate large scale em­ploy­ment for the coun­try’s un­der­em­ployed and un­em­ployed.

Busi­ness­men are cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic about the new wave of con­struc­tion and in­vest­ment be­ing promised, call­ing it vi­sion­ary but warn­ing that ex­e­cu­tion, and not talk will de­ter­mine its suc­cess.

ANSA McAL yes­ter­day de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $181.83 mil­lion for the three months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, a 21 per cent in­crease com­pared to the group’s $150.17 mil­lion prof­it for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.