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.

HA­VANA (AP) — It’s al­most noon in Ha­vana when a hand­ful of tourists tum­ble out of a small yel­low bus and rush to­ward a row of shiny clas­sic cars, cam­eras in hand.

Much of the fo­cus at this week’s en­er­gy con­fer­ence was fixed on the po­ten­tial re­turns from oil and gas projects.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An­oth­er long-stand­ing Port-of-Spain busi­ness has an­nounced plans to tran­si­tion from its cur­rent op­er­at­ing mod­el.

PANA­MA CITY–Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says leg­is­la­tion to make pri­vate pen­sions tax free has been draft­ed and is now be­fore Cab­i­net, with the mea­sure ex­pect­ed to be in­clud­ed in a Fi­nance Bill due for Par­lia­ment by late Feb­ru­ary or ear­ly March.

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.

Peren­co’s trans­for­ma­tion in­to one of T&T’s largest en­er­gy pro­duc­ers did not hap­pen overnight. It un­fold­ed through a de­lib­er­ate, decade-long con­sol­i­da­tion strat­e­gy that turned ma­ture, of­ten over­looked as­sets in­to a uni­fied pro­duc­tion sys­tem with na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance.

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.”