Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen is de­fend­ing the state-owned com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to end its 21-year re­la­tion­ship with in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings agency Moody’s, in­sist­ing the move does not re­flect any re­treat from trans­paren­cy or in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny.

In a let­ter re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism from for­mer min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, Ramdeen said NGC had in­stead en­gaged Fitch Rat­ings while main­tain­ing its ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ship with S&P Glob­al Rat­ings.

He said all three agen­cies are in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised among the “Big Three” cred­it rat­ings firms and ar­gued the de­ci­sion re­flects a strate­gic re­align­ment rather than an at­tempt to avoid over­sight.

“The sug­ges­tion that NGC is some­how re­treat­ing from scruti­ny is plain­ly ab­surd,” Ramdeen wrote.

He said cred­it rat­ings are paid pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and that NGC is en­ti­tled to as­sess fac­tors such as cost, method­ol­o­gy, in­vestor reach, ser­vice qual­i­ty and strate­gic fit when de­cid­ing which agen­cies to re­tain.

Ramdeen re­ject­ed claims that the com­pa­ny was “rat­ing shop­ping”, say­ing it con­tin­ues to main­tain in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings cov­er­age through S&P and Fitch.

“The prop­er ques­tion is whether the agen­cies en­gaged are in­de­pen­dent, com­pe­tent, rep­utable and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised,” he said.

Ramdeen al­so out­lined sev­er­al mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed since the cur­rent board as­sumed of­fice, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of an ex­pen­di­ture re­view com­mit­tee, which he said re­duced op­er­at­ing costs by more than TT$700 mil­lion over ten months.

He said NGC has al­so moved to ad­dress pay­ment is­sues re­lat­ed to gas sup­plied to T&TEC, re­struc­ture re­la­tion­ships with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor, en­cour­age ex­plo­ration, and pur­sue eq­ui­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion in up­stream gas projects to se­cure fu­ture sup­ply.

The com­pa­ny is al­so pur­su­ing down­stream in­vest­ments aimed at gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change rev­enue, he added.

Ac­cord­ing to Ramdeen, of­fi­cials from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) in­di­cat­ed ear­li­er this year that sev­er­al of the re­forms be­ing pur­sued align with long-stand­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to im­prove Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic re­silience.

He said NGC in­her­it­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, in­clud­ing de­clin­ing gas pro­duc­tion, for­eign ex­change pres­sures and weak­ened in­vestor con­fi­dence.

Ramdeen added that the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to main­tain in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings cov­er­age, pub­lish fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion and en­gage with in­vestors.

The is­sue arose af­ter Moody’s with­drew NGC’s Ba2 cor­po­rate fam­i­ly rat­ing, Ba2 base­line cred­it as­sess­ment and Ba2 se­nior un­se­cured notes rat­ing, stat­ing that the com­pa­ny had ceased par­tic­i­pat­ing in the rat­ings process.

NGC lat­er said the split stemmed from “fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences” over Moody’s ap­proach to as­sess­ing sov­er­eign link­age and state-owned en­ter­pris­es, ar­gu­ing that the method­ol­o­gy did not ful­ly re­flect the com­pa­ny’s stand­alone fi­nan­cial strength and re­cent per­for­mance im­prove­ments, in­clud­ing a pro­ject­ed TT$3.3 bil­lion prof­it af­ter tax for 2025.

The de­vel­op­ment has drawn crit­i­cism from for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who de­scribed the with­draw­al as a “se­ri­ous red flag” for the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor and broad­er econ­o­my.