Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day said he would speak with the se­nior of­fi­cial at the Min­istry of Fi­nance ap­point­ed to li­aise with Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, the trustees of the Arcelor­Mit­tal Point Lisas pen­sion fund, to de­ter­mine the true facts of the state of the fund.This comes one day af­ter the Steel Work­ers' Union of T&T (SWUTT) said the pen­sion plan was jeop­ardy.

Im­bert had an­nounced at a March 21 press con­fer­ence that a se­nior min­istry of­fi­cial was in­struct­ed to get the facts on the ad­e­qua­cy of the com­pa­ny's pen­sion plan. But yes­ter­day, Im­bert said he had still not re­ceived in­for­ma­tion from the of­fi­cial. "The se­nior of­fi­cial has not yet re­port­ed back to me. I would speak with him to­mor­row (to­day)," Im­bert said in a tele­phone in­ter­view

Mean­while, Arcelor­Mit­tal, via a press re­lease from Lisa-Ann Joseph, yes­ter­day de­nied cer­tain re­ports in a Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle about the pen­sion plan.In the re­lease, Arcelor­Mit­tal said it com­plied with the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the ac­tu­ary, Ba­con Woodrow & de Souza Lim­it­ed, in its 2012 re­port.

The com­pa­ny said this com­pli­ance was to pay con­tri­bu­tions at six per cent up to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015 and then 23.7 per cent for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2015 to March 2016. How­ev­er, the ac­tu­ar­ies ad­vised that be­cause the econ­o­my was small and de­vel­op­ing, it meant that the out­look for key eco­nom­ic fac­tors such as in­fla­tion was un­cer­tain. The ac­tu­ar­ies said both the plan's fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and the com­pa­ny's con­tri­bu­tion rate in the fu­ture were volatile. The com­pa­ny was there­fore ad­vised to in­crease its con­tri­bu­tion for em­ploy­ees to 12 per cent be­fore Oc­to­ber last year.

The ac­tu­ar­ies al­so ad­vised that if the plan's ex­pe­ri­ence fol­lowed the as­sump­tions in the val­u­a­tion, the com­pa­ny could con­tin­ue to con­tribute at the 12 per cent un­til Au­gust 31, 2016. How­ev­er, yes­ter­day's press re­lease did not ad­dress this.Arcelor­Mit­tal is­sued ter­mi­na­tion let­ters to 644 work­ers on March 11.

The Sun­day Guardian, in an email on Sat­ur­day night, al­so di­rect­ed ques­tions to Joseph about a $9 mil­lion pay­ment made in Feb­ru­ary to­wards the plan. She did not ad­dress this.Yes­ter­day, the union said it was con­vinced the com­pa­ny had de­fault­ed in its pen­sion pay­ments and called on the rel­e­vant par­ties "to come clean."

The 2014 fi­nan­cial state­ments for the pen­sion plan showed that the sur­plus of rev­enue over ex­pen­di­ture for 2013 was $$64.791,005, the union claimed. The fund at the be­gin­ning of that year was $799,588,165.The sur­plus of rev­enue over ex­pen­di­ture for 2014 was $1,920,962–a dras­tic drop by about $62 mil­lion. The fund as at 2014 was $864,379,170.

T&T Guardian re­ceived a copy of the fi­nan­cial state­ments.SWUTT sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Ramku­mar Nar­i­nesingh said, "It seems that the com­pa­ny's fail­ure to fol­low the ac­tu­ar­ies' sug­ges­tion in the 2012 re­port to in­crease from the six per cent to the 12 per cent, re­sult­ed in the sur­plus di­min­ish­ing."

Yes­ter­day's press re­lease from the com­pa­ny spoke to the 2012 sur­plus which was then $53.6 mil­lion.The 2015 fi­nan­cial state­ments are out­stand­ing.The union al­so main­tained yes­ter­day that at last Thurs­day's meet­ing with the ac­tu­ar­ies and trustees, it was not told of any de­ci­sion re­gard­ing clo­sure and ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the com­pa­ny said, "Both trustee and the ac­tu­ary were in­formed of the cur­rent sta­tus of the com­pa­ny and ter­mi­na­tion of all em­ploy­ees, hav­ing had both tele­phon­ic con­ver­sa­tions and a meet­ing with the com­pa­ny as ear­ly as on March 14, 2016."