Nadaleen Singh

It is not un­usal for the Gov­ern­ment to float a $2 bil­lion bond is­sue, said Vas­ant Bharath, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Trade Min­is­ter. He said the Gov­ern­ment is jus­ti­fied in float­ing the bond since there are gov­ern­ment li­a­bil­i­ties. "There are sev­er­al gov­ern­ment li­a­bil­i­ties that are out­stand­ing - there are li­a­bilites to con­trac­tors, there are li­a­bil­i­ties with re­gard to wages, there are lots of out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ties. It is the rea­son why we cur­rent­ly have a deficit, sim­ply be­cause rev­enues are not matched by ex­pen­di­ture. That's a se­quence that has been go­ing on now for sev­er­al years. Last year the deficit was about $7.5 bil­lion.

It is like­ly that we would run an­oth­er deficit cer­tain­ly for this year and for an­oth­er two years. These are gen­er­al li­a­bil­i­ties that the Gov­ern­ment has to cov­er and we need to raise funds for." Bharath was speak­ing to re­porters yes­ter­day af­ter the NEM lead­er­ship con­fer­ence which was held at Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's. On Sep­tem­ber 16, the Gov­ern­ment pub­lished a no­tice of a $2 bil­lion, 15-year bond is­sue. It is the sec­ond bond is­sue for 2011-2012 and car­ries a coupon rate of 5.2 per cent an an­num. Cen­tral Bank of T&T, the agent for the bond is­sue, start­ed the auc­tion sys­tem for the is­sue on Mon­day, which would close at 1 pm on Sep­tem­ber 25. The bond is be­ing is­sued un­der the De­vel­op­ment Loans Act (71:04).