Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Win­ston Dook­er­an, said yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment pro­posed to merge the Home Mort­gage Bank and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny to cre­ate a new in­sti­tu­tion called Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank for which an Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer (IPO) by the Gov­ern­ment will be is­sued.

De­liv­er­ing the 2012 bud­get at the new site of Par­lia­ment at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex in Port-of-Spain, he al­so an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment will is­sue an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing of shares in First Cit­i­zens, the state-owned bank. He said, though, that the of­fer­ing of shares in First Cit­i­zens will not af­fect Gov­ern­ment own­er­ship of the Bank. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance said that the ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing for First Cit­i­zens "will as­sist the Bank in widen­ing its cap­i­tal base and so fa­cil­i­tate its ex­pan­sion pro­gramme in which the Bank is cur­rent­ly en­gaged."

In a state­ment short­ly af­ter the bud­get was pre­sent­ed, the group CEO of First Cit­i­zens, Lar­ry Howai, said that the bank was "very pleased that, as an­nounced in to­day's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has ac­cept­ed our rec­om­men­da­tion to al­low cit­i­zens to own shares in First Cit­i­zens through an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing for the very first time in our his­to­ry." Howai said the bank­ing group con­tin­ued to per­form "ro­bust­ly" with a cap­i­tal base of $4.9 bil­lion in 2010 and be­fore-tax prof­it of $343.6 mil­lion for the six months pe­ri­od end­ing March 2011. Dook­er­an said that the Gov­ern­ment was plan­ning a two-phase ap­proach to di­vest­ing state en­ter­pris­es. The first phase of the pro­gramme would in­volve the se­cur­ing of strate­gic in­vestors for a num­bers of state en­ter­pris­es.

In par­al­lel, fur­ther pub­lic of­fer­ings will be made on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change. He said that the Gov­ern­ment would of­fer to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty fur­ther tranch­es of the share­hold­ing of Gov­ern­ment in Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed as well as the par­tial di­vest­ments of the mort­gage bank and First Cit­i­zens. Dook­er­an said that the Gov­ern­ment was con­tin­u­ing with the tech­ni­cal work and due dili­gence ex­er­cis­es in the re­main­ing state en­ter­pris­es. "We en­vis­age a sec­ond phase of the pro­gramme which would in­volve, where ap­pro­pri­ate, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of fur­ther pub­lic of­fer­ings or the se­cur­ing of strate­gic in­vestors for some of those en­ter­pris­es," he said.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance said that in the fi­nal analy­sis, all state en­ter­pris­es would be mod­ernised with best prac­tice cor­po­rate gov­er­nance struc­tures in their ad­min­is­tra­tion. "We are en­sur­ing through the mod­erni­sa­tion of our state en­ter­pris­es that the cit­i­zens of this coun­try are pro­vid­ed with af­ford­able, trans­par­ent and cus­tomer-fo­cused ser­vices and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to share in the own­er­ship of these en­ter­pris­es."