Sean Nero

While the Cen­tral Bank of T&T sup­ports de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­kets and es­tab­lish­ment of new prod­ucts and ser­vices that en­hance in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, its Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran is urg­ing in­vestors in the mu­tu­al fund mar­ket to ex­er­cise cau­tion.Speak­ing at the launch of Bourse Se­cu­ri­ties Brazil Latin Fund at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, Ram­bar­ran said while the bank un­der­stood and sup­port­ed the need for de­vel­op­ment of the cap­i­tal mar­ket in T&T, there were risks in­volved for the in­vestor.

"It would be re­miss of me as a reg­u­la­tor if I did not cau­tion all per­sons de­sirous of in­vest­ing in the Bourse Brazil Latin Fund about the fund's cap­i­tal risk. As all good in­vest­ment ad­vi­sors would state, past per­for­mance is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good pre­dic­tor of fu­ture per­for­mance.

I there­fore urge all prospec­tive in­vestors to un­der­stand the na­ture of the cur­ren­cy, liq­uid­i­ty and cred­it risks in­her­ent in the Bourse Brazil Latin Fund, as well as the mea­sures that Bourse Se­cu­ri­ties will put in place to mit­i­gate these risks. I en­cour­age all prospec­tive in­vestors to care­ful­ly read the fund's prospec­tus and if nec­es­sary, to seek the ad­vice of an in­de­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­al in­vest­ment ex­pert," Ram­bar­ran said.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Sub­has Ramkhelawan, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Bourse Se­cu­ri­ties, urged po­ten­tial in­vestors to heed the gov­er­nor's ad­vice so they would be bet­ter in­formed on the way for­ward.Ram­bar­ran said the fund, a first for this coun­try, will pro­vide in­vestors with an av­enue to tap in­to the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket which he de­scribed as dy­nam­ic.

"Brazil has emerged as a pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic force with­in Latin Amer­i­ca and the world econ­o­my, be­fit­ting its sta­tus as one of the four BRIC coun­tries pre­dict­ed to rank among the world's largest and most in­flu­en­tial coun­tries in the 21st cen­tu­ry."Since the mid-1990s, Brazil has en­joyed greater macro­eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, be­com­ing one of the main des­ti­na­tions for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in en­er­gy, trans­porta­tion and hi-tech man­u­fac­tur­ing," said Ram­bar­ran.

He added: "Al­though Brazil's short-term growth per­for­mance weak­ened in 2012, an eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery is un­der­way and growth is an­tic­i­pat­ed to gain mo­men­tum in 2013."