The chron­ic short­age of for­eign ex­change dom­i­nat­ed dis­cus­sions on day two of the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), as lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers high­light­ed to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian the ex­treme bank­ing hur­dles and par­al­lel mar­ket re­liance cur­rent­ly keep­ing their busi­ness­es alive.

The Cen­tral Bank said yes­ter­day that it is about to im­ple­ment mea­sures that are ex­pect­ed to “pro­vide mean­ing­ful re­lief” on the long-stand­ing is­sue of the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change in the near to medi­um term.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance an­nounced yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment was suc­cess­ful in rais­ing an US$800 mil­lion sov­er­eign bond in the US mar­ket.

The Food Dis­trib­u­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (FDA) has elect­ed its ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee for the up­com­ing term, with Jake Gillette, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of West In­di­an Traders Ltd (WITL), ap­point­ed as chair­man.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says its up­com­ing trade and in­vest­ment mis­sion to Cana­da will fo­cus on prepar­ing busi­ness­es to se­cure deals be­fore they board the plane.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fis­cal po­si­tion strength­ened dur­ing the first sev­en months of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year, with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment record­ing a small­er over­all deficit de­spite low­er en­er­gy rev­enues, as stronger col­lec­tions from non-en­er­gy sources helped off­set the de­cline.

On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2008, then Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark raised a mo­tion on the ad­journ­ment deal­ing with the trans­fer or sale of some 450 acres (182.1 hectares) of “prime agri­cul­tur­al land” lo­cat­ed on the Or­ange Grove Es­tate to Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd, a com­pa­ny found­ed and owned by Do­minic Hadeed.

The pub­lic re­buke of Massy Hold­ings by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley on Mon­day has ig­nit­ed a wider de­bate over su­per­mar­ket pric­ing, mar­ket con­cen­tra­tion and com­pe­ti­tion across the Caribbean, with the Bar­ba­dos Con­sumer Em­pow­er­ment Net­work (BCEN) warn­ing that the is­sue ex­tends well be­yond a sin­gle re­tail­er.

The pri­vate sec­tors of T&T and Guyana en­tered in­to eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion arrange­ment yes­ter­day with the for­mal sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) to es­tab­lish a Joint Cham­bers of Com­merce Work­ing Mech­a­nism.

Over the years I have spent lots of time on so­cial me­dia ar­gu­ing that the Video As­sis­tant Ref­er­ee Sys­tem isn’t fit for pur­pose. There is of course the usu­al push­back that the tech­nol­o­gy al­lows for the cor­rect de­ci­sion and every­one should be in favour of hav­ing the cor­rect de­ci­sions in a foot­ball match, es­pe­cial­ly when the stakes are high.

Good re­sults in­fre­quent­ly get achieved with no process or a very flawed process. How­ev­er good re­sults of­ten­times are the re­sult of a good process. If we want a high con­fi­dence lev­el that we will get a good re­sult, it is a no brain­er that we must have a good process.

It is 7:15 on a week­day morn­ing. Traf­fic crawls along the East­ern Main Road as com­muters inch to­wards an­oth­er work­day. A dri­ver abrupt­ly cuts in­to the next lane with­out sig­nalling. Horns pierce the morn­ing air. A PH taxi stops un­ex­pect­ed­ly to col­lect a pas­sen­ger, bring­ing traf­fic to a stand­still. Two mo­torists ex­change an­gry words through open win­dows. Just me­tres away, plas­tic bot­tles, food con­tain­ers and oth­er dis­card­ed waste clog a road­side drain that will al­most cer­tain­ly over­flow with the next heavy down­pour.