Nadaleen Singh

Gov­ern­ment plans to wrap up the Cli­co is­sue this year, said Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Lar­ry Howai. Howai added that it has cost the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty $19.7 bil­lion. "I am pleased to re­port that as at Sep­tem­ber 18, 2012 25, 115 STIP hold­ers, in­clud­ing cred­it unions and trade unions, ac­count­ing for $10.268 bil­lion have ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment's set­tle­ment of­fer. We shall launch the CLI­CO In­vest­ment Fund on No­vem­ber 1st, 2012 and on Jan­u­ary 2nd, 2013 trad­ing will be­gin on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change for the units of those per­sons who ex­changed their 11-20 year bonds for units in the Cli­co In­vest­ment Fund."

The as­sets un­der­ly­ing the Cli­co In­vest­ment Fund are the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny's own­er­ship of 51.8 mil­lion Re­pub­lic Bank shares, which will be trans­ferred to the Gov­ern­ment and then to the Fund. The pol­i­cy­hold­ers will then be giv­en the op­tion of con­vert­ing their 11 to 20 ze­ro-coupon bonds in­to the equiv­a­lent num­ber of units in the Fund at a one-to-one ra­tio. In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Pe­ter Per­me­ll Chair­man Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group said he sup­ports the de­ci­sion by the Gov­ern­ment to wrap up the Cli­co is­sue but there are out­stand­ing is­sues.

Per­me­ll ex­pressed con­cern that the num­ber of units the pol­i­cy­hold­ers would be en­ti­tled to re­ceive would be less based on the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the Re­pub­lic Bank share price from last Oc­to­ber when the pro­pos­al was first pub­li­cised. "The oth­er de­tail which would be im­por­tant is what would be the con­ver­sion rate from bonds in­to units. Al­though the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has not stat­ed what would be the con­ver­sion rate, that is an is­sue we cer­tain­ly would pay close at­ten­tion to." The Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers pre­fer the con­ver­sion rate as at the date of the of­fer, which was De­cem­ber 1, 2011. "Our in­tial re­ac­tion is that we feel a sense of re­lief and vin­di­ca­tion."