The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec) pro­pos­es to raise TT$750 mil­lion through the is­sue of 19-year bonds with a fixed coupon rate of 6.55 per cent. This was pro­vid­ed by an in­for­ma­tion mem­o­ran­dum from Nipdec yes­ter­day. The bonds will be is­sued in one tranche on May 17, 2011 pur­suant to a trust deed be­tween Nipdec and the First Cit­i­zens Trustee Ser­vices Ltd. The bonds will be is­sued with the fol­low­ing fea­tures:

• Ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$750 mil­lion 6.55 per cent fixed rate bonds due May 17, 2030;

• The Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go will auc­tion the bonds via the sin­gle price auc­tion sys­tem;

• As far as pos­si­ble the ap­pli­cants will be al­lot­ted bonds to the fullest ex­tent of their ap­pli­ca­tions, sub­ject to ap­plic­a­ble lim­its for Gov­ern­ment se­cu­ri­ties trad­ing out­lined in the Gov­ern­ment Se­cu­ri­ties Set­tle­ment Pro­ce­dures;

• The auc­tion was opened at 1 pm on May 3 and will be closed at 1 pm on May 13, 2011.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Nipdec, the pro­ceeds of this is­sue will be used to fi­nance the Pro­gramme for the Up­grade of Road Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) which is an ex­ten­sive pro­gramme of road re­pairs and en­hance­ment through the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. These bonds are el­i­gi­ble for in­clu­sion in the Statu­to­ry Fund of In­sur­ance Com­pa­nies and will be con­sid­ered as­sets in and orig­i­nat­ing in T&T with­in the mean­ing of sec­tions 46 (1) and 186 (1) re­spec­tive­ly of the In­sur­ance Act, 1980 and will al­so be ac­cept­ed with­out lim­it for ap­pro­pri­ate de­posit pur­pose in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 29 of the In­sur­ance Act.

Nipdec is one of the lead­ing prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment com­pa­nies in the coun­try and ac­cord­ing to da­ta for the fi­nan­cial year 2010 the com­pa­ny record­ed an unau­dit­ed prof­it of $2.992 mil­lion in the six months end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2010. To­tal rev­enue earned amount­ed to $30.95 mil­lion and op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es stood at $25.054 mil­lion. Ac­cord­ing to Nipdec's debt pro­file, the com­pa­ny has long terms bor­row­ings as at 30 June 2010 in the sum of $71.6 mil­lion.

It is bro­ken down as:

• Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board $9.2 mil­lion

• First Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank $17.8 mil­lion

• First Cit­i­zens Mer­chant Bank $44.6 mil­lion