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Sunday, May 25, 2025

GHL floats $1 billion bond

by

20110301

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to in­tro­duce a new na­tion­al pen­sion plan.This would in­cor­po­rate the present Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board's (NIB) na­tion­al in­sur­ance plan with oth­er groups of peo­ple who are not in­clud­ed in the sys­tem."We are look­ing at a na­tion­al in­sur­ance pro­gramme from which we can take the ex­ist­ing pro­gramme to cre­ate sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Pen­sion re­form has been on the agen­da for the last 20 years. We want to ex­pand it be­yond the pub­lic sec­tor to in­clude in­di­vid­u­als who are self em­ployed in this pro­gramme. So far it has been large­ly con­fined to is­sues af­fect­ing the pub­lic sec­tor," he said.

He added that there are dif­fer­ent pieces of leg­is­la­tion which the Gov­ern­ment now has to tie to­geth­er to make the na­tion­al pen­sion plan pos­si­ble."There are many leg­isla­tive pieces on the books on dif­fer­ent as­pects of pen­sions. The ob­jec­tive is to har­monise all of them. At this point, we are on the draw­ing board be­cause we start­ed this af­ter the bud­get. We recog­nise the im­por­tance of in­tro­duc­ing a har­monised sys­tem," he said.He was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Guardian Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (GHL) $1 bil­lion bond at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

Citibank act­ed as the sole arranger for the cor­po­rate bond is­suance by GHL, which rep­re­sents the largest lo­cal cur­ren­cy is­sue and the longest tenor made avail­able to a pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ty in T&T.Dook­er­an re­ferred to a study he re­cent­ly read, but did not name, that stat­ed that the fi­nan­cial cri­sis caused by Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Cli­co) caused a 17 per cent loss of wealth in the Caribbean.De­spite this, he said the is­suance of this bond shows that there is a grow­ing con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my.

Dook­er­an al­so wants to go to Par­lia­ment in April to seek to raise the debt ceil­ing."We will be go­ing maybe in April to raise the lim­it for bor­row­ing so that we will be able to raise some is­sues of our own. I don't have the fig­ures with me at the mo­ment but that will come out in due course," he said.He added that there are po­lit­i­cal ob­sta­cles in try­ing to do this."We have to go to Par­lia­ment to seek sup­port for our bor­row­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties. That as you know is a po­lit­i­cal hur­dle that must be moved and over­come," he said.


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