PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young says the re­cent de­cline in prof­its of state-con­trolled com­pa­nies may be a symp­tom of gov­ern­ment poli­cies.

At yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion news con­fer­ence, Young specif­i­cal­ly point­ed to the per­for­mance of the First Cit­i­zens Group and An­gos­tu­ra, who both re­port­ed de­creased prof­its in re­cent­ly re­leased re­ports.

“First Cit­i­zens, an in­dige­nous bank that we should be proud of in Trinidad and To­ba­go, go and check their re­sults. Their nine-month re­sults as at the end of June 2026. They have re­port­ed a de­cline in their prof­itabil­i­ty of over 10 per cent. That is a se­ri­ous red flag,” said Young.

Last week, FCB re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $645.98 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2026, a 10.2 per cent de­cline com­pared to the $719.6 mil­lion the bank­ing group earned for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Young al­so point­ed to An­gos­tu­ra’s fi­nan­cial re­port which was re­leased on Tues­day. The com­pa­ny al­so re­port­ed a drop in prof­its for the half year, with its six-month af­ter-tax prof­it drop­ping by $5 .5 mil­lion to $62 mil­lion from $67.5 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2025, a de­cline of 8.1 per cent.

“An­gos­tu­ra, once a jew­el of the CL Fi­nan­cial group, al­so just re­port­ed at the end of the first half of 2026 a de­cline in its prof­itabil­i­ty,” said Young, who point­ed to mea­sures in last year’s bud­get which he said may have im­pact­ed these com­pa­nies’ fi­nan­cial re­turns.

“You would re­call that banks and in­sur­ance com­pa­nies were sad­dled with a new as­set-based tax. FCB now re­ports over 10 per cent de­cline in prof­itabil­i­ty. Al­co­hol sad­dled with mas­sive in­creas­es on tax. An­gos­tu­ra rev­enue down, prof­it down. They don’t want fo­cus on that.”

In An­gos­tu­ra’s fi­nan­cial re­port for the six month pe­ri­od, Chair­man Gary Hunt did ac­knowl­edge the im­pact of the in­crease of ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol, which was raised by 100 per cent in the last bud­get. He said the com­pa­ny had achieved growth “de­spite the un­prece­dent­ed in­crease in ex­cise du­ties in the lo­cal mar­ket.”

He said, “Recog­nis­ing the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing con­sumers and pre­serv­ing mar­ket share, the group de­lib­er­ate­ly ab­sorbed a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of these high­er tax­es, rather than pass­ing the full in­crease on through pric­ing. While this de­ci­sion re­duced mar­gins in the short term, it re­in­forces our com­mit­ment to our con­sumers and the long-term strength of our brands.”

Young said the re­cent “ma­jor” an­nounce­ments by the gov­ern­ment with re­gard to the en­er­gy sec­tor were large­ly to dis­tract from the ad­verse im­pact gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy has had on these busi­ness­es.

He al­so added while the BP an­nounce­ments with re­gard to Man­akin-Cocuina and Ca­lyp­so were in­deed pos­i­tive for T&T, he said most of the ne­go­ti­a­tions for those de­vel­op­ments had start­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.