I am writ­ing to draw the at­ten­tion of pol­i­cy­mak­ers, in­vestors, and the broad­er pub­lic to a re­mark­able eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty that, re­mark­ably, re­ceived ze­ro men­tion in the re­cent Na­tion­al Bud­get. I re­fer to the po­ten­tial for Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­come the Caribbean’s pre­mier hub for high-val­ue hemp and cannabis pro­cess­ing.

As dis­cus­sions swirled fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the gov­ern­ment had signed Mem­o­ran­dums of Un­der­stand­ing (MoUs) with the aim of es­tab­lish­ing da­ta cen­tres in T&T, man­age­ment sci­en­tist Dr Kevin Fleary opt­ed to share his point of view via an ar­ti­cle sent to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

On Au­gust 1, drums will speak across the Caribbean as li­ba­tions dark­en the earth. We will call the names of those who sur­vived what was de­signed to erase them, and re­mem­ber that free­dom was nev­er hand­ed down in kind­ness, it was wrest­ed from a sys­tem that de­clared African bod­ies prop­er­ty and Caribbean is­lands ma­chines for some­one else’s wealth.

GML Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC), Bal­dath Ma­haraj, has de­scribed the in­tro­duc­tion of a new 10 per cent tar­iff on the coun­try's ex­ports to the Unit­ed States as a piv­otal mo­ment to strength­en ex­port readi­ness and deep­en com­mer­cial ties with the coun­try.

The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) has con­firmed an­oth­er change to its board of di­rec­tors, with Nadi­ra Parb­hu­di­al re­sign­ing ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 22, re­duc­ing the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny’s board to three mem­bers.

Ray­mond & Pierre Ltd has ap­point­ed char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or Ross Dar­ling­ton as an as­so­ciate di­rec­tor, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 21, the com­pa­ny an­nounced in a news re­lease.
Dar­ling­ton joined the firm in Feb­ru­ary 2024 and has been based at its Port of Spain of­fice. His ap­point­ment comes as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to ex­pand its lead­er­ship team to sup­port grow­ing de­mand for pro­fes­sion­al prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion and con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.
In the re­lease, Ray­mond & Pierre man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Afra Ray­mond said Dar­ling­ton's ap­point­ment strength­ens the firm's tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise.
"Ross brings ex­act­ly the kind of tech­ni­cal rigour and mar­ket in­sight our clients re­ly on. As de­mand for pro­fes­sion­al prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to grow, hav­ing some­one of his cal­i­bre join our lead­er­ship team strength­ens what we can of­fer across the re­gion."
Dar­ling­ton holds an As­so­ciate De­gree in Busi­ness Man­age­ment from the UWI School of Busi­ness and Ap­plied Stud­ies (ROYTEC), a BA (Hons) in Busi­ness Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sun­der­land and an MSc in Re­al Es­tate Man­age­ment and De­vel­op­ment from Heri­ot-Watt Uni­ver­si­ty in Ed­in­burgh.
He qual­i­fied as char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or in 2020 and is al­so a reg­is­tered val­uer.
The re­lease said Dar­ling­ton has worked with both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al firms and has al­so served the In­sti­tute of Sur­vey­ors of Trinidad and To­ba­go, hold­ing the po­si­tion of as­sis­tant trea­sur­er in 2022.
Ray­mond & Pierre said its roots date back to 1972, when Eu­gene M Ray­mond es­tab­lished Eu­gene M Ray­mond & Com­pa­ny af­ter re­tir­ing as Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions.
The firm said the part­ner­ship with Ralph A Pierre was formed in 1977 fol­low­ing his re­tire­ment as Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions. It was in­cor­po­rat­ed as Ray­mond & Pierre Ltd in Jan­u­ary 2000.
The com­pa­ny said it is now the old­est and largest pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice of char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­ors, re­al es­tate agents and prop­er­ty con­sul­tants in T&T.

Wednes­day’s de­ci­sion by Stan­dard & Poor’s to up­hold T&T’s in­vest­ment-grade rat­ing of BBB- is a good sign, but ex­perts note that the rat­ings agency’s de­ci­sion to main­tain the coun­try out­look at neg­a­tive is a con­cern.

Re­newed diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment be­tween T&T and Venezuela has re­vived hopes that long-de­layed cross-bor­der gas projects could move clos­er to re­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, econ­o­mists and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan say im­proved gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment re­la­tions are on­ly the first step, warn­ing that com­mer­cial, le­gal and geopo­lit­i­cal hur­dles must still be over­come be­fore projects such as Drag­on and Lo­ran-Man­a­tee can de­liv­er mean­ing­ful ben­e­fits.

For decades, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic suc­cess has been close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the en­er­gy sec­tor. While that lega­cy has served the coun­try well, the re­al­i­ties of to­day’s glob­al econ­o­my de­mand a broad­er and more re­silient ap­proach to growth. The fu­ture of our na­tion de­pends not on­ly on our nat­ur­al re­sources, but in­creas­ing­ly on the in­ge­nu­ity, ex­per­tise and in­no­va­tion of our peo­ple.

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein is con­vinced that cruise tourism can help di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and bring much need­ed for­eign ex­change in­to the coun­try.

De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Ltd (DFL) says ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing is no longer the biggest ob­sta­cle fac­ing many small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es, ar­gu­ing in­stead that weak busi­ness mod­els are pre­vent­ing en­tre­pre­neurs from se­cur­ing the cap­i­tal they need.

Over the past few weeks, many of you have fol­lowed my pre­vi­ous guide and suc­cess­ful­ly opened a Charles Schwab In­ter­na­tion­al bro­ker­age ac­count.