Raphael John-Lall

Stat­ing he was un­aware that the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) had in­creased its share­hold­ing in Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL), Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, said gov­ern­ment has no plans to in­crease its con­trol over the bank. Gov­ern­ment, by agree­ing in Jan­u­ary 2009 to bail out the cash-strapped CL Fi­nan­cial Group, now has con­trol of CL Fi­nan­cial's 55 per cent share­hold­ing in RBL. "I was not aware that they have in­creased their share­hold­ing be­cause there was al­ways a share­hold­ing. The share­hold­ing must not be con­fused with Gov­ern­ment in its cus­to­di­an role," said Browne, who's al­so Trade Min­is­ter.

He was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. NIB on Wednes­day pub­lished two no­tices stat­ing it had in­creased its share­hold­ing in RBL and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL).

Browne said there were no plans by gov­ern­ment to in­crease its con­trol over RBL. "There is no at­tempt by Gov­ern­ment to in­crease its lever­age over Re­pub­lic Bank," he said, adding that NIB's role is to pro­vide for those peo­ple who have paid con­tri­bu­tions to it. "In any case, the share­hold­ing at NIB is is­suant in its oblig­a­tions for in­vest­ments, which will reach down to the ben­e­fit of its con­stituents, and for those of us who are con­trib­u­tors to the NIS who are look­ing for­ward to ben­e­fits for our re­tire­ment," he said.

Com­ment­ing on ques­tions about CL Fi­nan­cial and gov­ern­ment's role in the group, Browne said Gov­ern­ment's role is to guide the con­glom­er­age out of its cur­rent fi­nan­cial state. "Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to cre­ate a mech­a­nism for the man­age­ment of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group and to man­age it out of its po­si­tion.

"We do have a cus­to­di­an role with the shares, and our po­si­tion is to man­age that in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T so that we bring it back to an op­er­at­ing lev­el for the peo­ple of T&T," he said. Browne al­so said gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion of sell­ing any of the as­sets of Cli­co, one of the three CL Fi­nan­cial-owned com­pa­nies that was be­ing bailed out. "One needs to be ju­di­cious in terms of the man­ag­ing of the as­sets at CL Fi­nan­cial Group, giv­en the de­pressed state of the mar­ket both here and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. There is cer­tain­ly no in­ten­tions of sell­ing the as­sets. The po­si­tion is to man­age them and man­age them well," he said.