Pe­ter D Nep­tune

From Jan­u­ary 2007 to the end of the cur­rent fis­cal year, Gov­ern­ment in­tends to bor­row more than $13.6 bil­lion to fi­nance the bud­get deficit, pay for sev­er­al large gov­ern­ment projects and to fund the gov­ern­ment's mon­ey sup­ply man­age­ment strat­e­gy for the econ­o­my. Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion by the Op­po­si­tion dur­ing pri­vate mem­bers day in the Sen­ate ear­li­er this week, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Nunez Tesheira said the gov­ern­ment has al­ready bor­rowed more than $8.8 bil­lion since Jan­u­ary 2007, and plans are al­ready be­ing made to raise an­oth­er $4.77 bil­lion to con­tin­ue its strat­e­gy in­to the new fis­cal year. The fund­ing needs for the next fis­cal year in­clude $2 bil­lion from the do­mes­tic mar­ket, $2.2 bil­lion from for­eign cap­i­tal mar­kets and an­oth­er $572.3 mil­lion in project re­lat­ed loans. She added that the Fi­nance Min­istry was in the process of de­vel­op­ing a plan for Trinidad and To­ba­go's bor­row­ing re­quire­ments for the medi­um term � that is for the next three to five years be­yond the cur­rent fis­cal pe­ri­od.

She said that in to­tal, from Jan­u­ary 2007 to the end of March 2009, the state bor­rowed more than $8.8 bil­lion. This in­cludes near­ly $3 bil­lion from the do­mes­tic cap­i­tal mar­kets and more than $5.8 bil­lion from in­ter­na­tion­al sources. Pri­or to the cur­rent fis­cal pe­ri­od, the Cen­tral gov­ern­ment bor­rowed three times through bond is­sues on Feb­ru­ary 2007 amount­ing to $674.3 mil­lion, in April 2007 an­oth­er is­sue was made for $1.02 bil­lion, and this was fol­lowed up by an­oth­er bond is­sue of $1.2 bil­lion in Feb­ru­ary 2008. The Min­is­ter said all three ap­proach­es on the lo­cal mar­ket was nec­es­sary for liq­uid­i­ty man­age­ment and to con­trol in­fla­tion in pur­suit of the gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment strat­e­gy for the lo­cal econ­o­my. Ex­ter­nal bor­row­ings in­clud­ed 190 mil­lion British pounds (TT$2.008 bil­lion), US$465 mil­lion (TT$2.953 bil­lion), 17 mil­lion Aus­tralian dol­lars (TT$99 mil­lion) and Chi­nese RMB 800 mil­lion (TT$744 mil­lion). The to­tal ex­ter­nal bor­row­ings in lo­cal cur­ren­cy from Jan­u­ary 2007 to March 2009 was val­ued at TT$5.8 bil­lion.

The ex­ter­nal loans in­clude 190 mil­lion British pounds as ex­port cred­it guar­an­tee for the pur­chase of two fast sup­port and in­ter­ven­tion ves­sels, three off­shore pa­trol ves­sels as well as train­ing and sup­port pack­ages for the pur­chase in April 2007.

Al­so in April 2007, gov­ern­ment bor­rowed US$15 mil­lion and 17 mil­lion Aus­tralian dol­lars to pur­chase an­oth­er six fast pa­trol crafts. Thir­teen months lat­er Gov­ern­ment again ap­proached the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets in May 2008, to re­fi­nanced a US$150 mil­lion bond is­sue that was due for re­pay­ment. This was fol­lowed up one month lat­er in June 2008, when gov­ern­ment se­cured a Buy­ers Cred­it Loan for the con­struc­tion of the Alutrint alu­mini­um com­plex project. At that time an­oth­er Chi­nese RMB 800 mil­lion loan was se­cured through a con­ces­sion­al rate fa­cil­i­ty with the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment for the con­struc­tion of Alutrint. Min­is­ter Tesheira said the in­ter­est rate on the fund­ing ranged from a high of 8.25 per cent for do­mes­tic bor­row­ings, to as low as 2 per­cent for the Chi­nese loan for Alutrint.