UTC to beef up energy fund

T&T’s economy is facing difficult times says Wendell Mottley, chairman, Unit Trust Corporation (UTC). “These are not easy times for our economy. The energy sector must grapple with the consequences and the competition from the Shale Gas revolution in the US. We are trying but we have not as yet diversified our economy. While macro economic indicators are trending in a positive direction, T&T is still exposed to the volatility and fragility of the global economic recovery,” he said.

Mottley, a former Minister of Finance, spoke at a farewell function for Amoy Chang Fong, former UTC chairman at the Trinidad Hilton. He said: “T&T has overly high levels of liquidity in the financial system and consequent low interest rates.  We need to find sound investment vehicles and opportunities. The new challenge of UTC is remembering the capital we hold for our most important asset which is the trust of unit holders. Today, nearly every household in the country relies on us to help them invest and plan for the future.”

Mottley spoke of plans for diversifying UTC’s investment portfolio in the future. “We have an energy fund at the UTC. We are strengthening the make up of the energy fund and we are going to be promoting that and a lot of our other funds very soon by looking more broadly based at those investments.

“We have to increasingly go abroad, we have to follow the energy trail to the Far East where a lot of our energy cargo is exported. The UTC continues to grow very strongly and it reflects the confidence the population has in the UTC,” he said. 

Mottley also said that the UTC intends to go on a mass financial literacy drive: “The UTC has a strategic plan it started to implement over the last three years and an essential element of that is wealth management which builds on our strength. We will go out there and educate broad sections of the population more deeply in investment and encourage the habit of saving among our population. The UTC has consistently helped ordinary folk in T&T,” he said.

Mottley is a former senior advisor and investment banker at Credit Suisse in New York. He was a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development, a United States-based think tank.