The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) is al­so rais­ing con­cern re­gard­ing last week's rev­e­la­tion that the Gov­ern­ment with­drew US$160.38 mil­lion ($1.09 bil­lion) mil­lion from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) on De­cem­ber 18, 2023. 

Last Wednes­day, the Guardian re­port­ed that the HSF quar­ter­ly re­port for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1 to De­cem­ber 31, 2023 stat­ed that the with­draw­al was made in ac­cor­dane with sec­tion 15 of the HSF Act (2007).   

The HSF quar­ter­ly re­port stat­ed that the with­draw­al came from the fund’s liq­uid as­sets, fur­ther clar­i­fy­ing that “as­sets from the US short-du­ra­tion fixed in­come man­date were sold to meet this oblig­a­tion.” 

TTC­SI pres­i­dent Di­anne Joseph, in a news re­lease, said the HSF is a crit­i­cal fi­nan­cial buffer for the na­tion, es­tab­lished to en­sure eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and sav­ings for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. Joseph said the gov­ern­ment must main­tain trans­paren­cy re­gard­ing the use of these funds to up­hold pub­lic trust and en­sure that with­drawals align with the ob­jec­tives of the HSF Act. 

She said the TTC­SI ac­knowl­edges the chal­lenges posed by de­clin­ing nat­ur­al gas prices and sup­ports the call for ro­bust dis­cus­sions among stake­hold­ers to en­hance and di­ver­si­fy eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. 

 “We al­so rec­og­nize that one of the pur­pos­es of the fund is to take care of de­clines in the prices of nat­ur­al gas, which is the sit­u­a­tion in this case, where it has fall­en by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent. This de­vel­op­ment will like­ly trig­ger the in­stru­ments which can be used by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance un­der the HSF Act, to make a draw­down, which is one of the rea­sons for the HSF,” Joseph high­light­ed. 

She not­ed that the ques­tion may be the de­lay in re­port­ing the draw­down to the na­tion and what may have caused the de­lay.  

“Is it be­cause of a chal­lenge in the in­ter­nal re­port­ing process­es or an­oth­er fac­tor? It will, there­fore, be in the Gov­ern­ment’s best in­ter­est to pro­vide ap­pro­pri­ate de­tails on the re­cent HSF with­draw­al and to take strate­gic steps to ad­dress the cur­rent eco­nom­ic gaps while safe­guard­ing the fi­nan­cial fu­ture. This will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she added. 

The T&T Cham­ber of in­dus­try and Com­merce in their re­lease last week said the Act is very clear about how the funds can be used. 

“The HSF can­not be used to fi­nance cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture or as col­lat­er­al for gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing di­rect­ly,” said the T&T Cham­ber, adding that there is spe­cif­ic guid­ance in the Act, so once the Fund is be­ing utilised in the stip­u­lat­ed man­ner, there is no rea­son for con­cern. 

“The Fund is de­signed to en­sure the best in­ter­ests of our peo­ple are served. The gov­ern­ment is do­ing what it sees as nec­es­sary now and is with­in its rights based on the Act. We be­lieve that this sig­nals the need for on­go­ing ro­bust dis­cus­sions among stake­hold­ers, with ac­tions to be tak­en to cat­alyze and build oth­er sec­tors of the econ­o­my to en­hance and im­prove eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,” the cham­ber added.