An an­nounce­ment will be made soon con­cern­ing the fu­ture of the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, but dis­cus­sions be­tween the Hilton group and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T are on­go­ing, Min­is­ter of Land & Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein said yes­ter­day.

While there have been more food park out­lets open­ing in re­cent months, there have been some shake ups at some more es­tab­lished lo­ca­tions.

Fol­low­ing the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, which re­sult­ed in a tran­si­tion from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led gov­ern­ment, the sta­tus of sev­er­al high-pro­file ho­tel projects has come un­der scruti­ny.

Busi­ness lead­ers be­lieve that the lat­est reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve to doc­u­ment all il­le­gal im­mi­grants in T&T from dif­fer­ent parts of the world will help boost the busi­ness sec­tor and econ­o­my in gen­er­al.

The Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre is un­der mount­ing pres­sure, with un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing its fu­ture in­ten­si­fy­ing as a long-de­layed $400 mil­lion up­grade pro­gramme re­mains un­ex­e­cut­ed and ne­go­ti­a­tions with in­ter­na­tion­al hote­lier Hilton con­tin­ue.

Just a cou­ple weeks ago, most peo­ple, if asked to lo­cate the Strait of Hor­muz on a map, would not know where to place the mark. The out­break of hos­til­i­ties be­tween the US and Is­rael on one hand, and Iran on the oth­er, has brought this nar­row pas­sage be­tween Iran and the Ara­bi­an Penin­su­la in­to sharp fo­cus. Yet most peo­ple don’t have a full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of how this sit­u­a­tion will im­pact their dai­ly lives.

Con­cerns about the in­con­sis­tent pay­ment of VAT as well as the lim­it­ed con­sul­ta­tion with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty were brought to the fore dur­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTMA) Lead­er­ship Dis­cus­sion and Net­work­ing Event at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

For many pro­fes­sion­als across the Caribbean, the hir­ing process can feel con­fus­ing and un­pre­dictable. Can­di­dates up­date their ré­sumés, high­light their ex­pe­ri­ence, and ap­ply for mul­ti­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties, yet many still strug­gle to move for­ward in re­cruit­ment process­es.

The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion has des­ig­nat­ed this sea­son (March 25th – April 24th) “Pro­cure­ment Month 2026”, an in­vi­ta­tion to recog­nise the grow­ing im­por­tance of pro­cure­ment to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. This is wel­come. Pub­lic pro­cure­ment de­serves the at­ten­tion. How­ev­er, if this sea­son is to mean any­thing be­yond train­ing events and slo­gans, it should al­so prompt a more dif­fi­cult re­flec­tion: what does it take to pro­tect the peo­ple in­side the sys­tem who are asked to up­hold its in­tegri­ty? With more and more re­ports of Named Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cers (NPOs) be­ing trans­ferred or ter­mi­nat­ed, that ques­tion is now ur­gent.

In the wake of re­cent or­gan­i­sa­tion­al changes and on­go­ing op­er­a­tional chal­lenges, it is im­per­a­tive that the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic arm is ad­e­quate­ly equipped to pro­vide ef­fec­tive over­sight, strong lead­er­ship, and pur­pose­ful di­rec­tion. This is achieved, in part, by en­sur­ing that gov­er­nance struc­tures are ad­e­quate­ly in­sti­tut­ed in the form of ef­fec­tive risk man­age­ment process­es, ro­bust in­ter­nal con­trol sys­tems, an em­bed­ded eth­i­cal frame­work, clear­ly de­fined poli­cies and pro­ce­dures, ap­pro­pri­ate del­e­ga­tion of au­thor­i­ty, trans­par­ent re­port­ing lines, and a fo­cus on stake­hold­er ex­pec­ta­tions and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has as­sured the pub­lic that the gov­ern­ment does not in­tend to in­crease fu­el prices at this time, de­spite the ris­ing cost of im­port­ed en­er­gy prod­ucts dri­ven by es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions in the Mid­dle East.

In de­liv­er­ing the 2026 bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13, 2026, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, out­lined two con­crete pro­pos­als that would pro­vide more op­tions for lo­cal in­vestors who want to de­ploy their TT-dol­lar sav­ings. Those two pro­pos­als were: