Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) has in­creased in val­ue this year.

At a press con­fer­ence host­ed by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day, Im­bert crit­i­cised what he said was a “mis­lead­ing” Sun­day Ex­press ar­ti­cle which the fi­nance min­is­ter said “be­moaned” what it re­ferred to as a 16 per cent loss in the val­ue of the HSF in 2022.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, the net as­set val­ue of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund was US$5.466 bil­lion (TT$37.17 bil­lion) on Fri­day June 9, 2023.

This, he added, is an in­crease of US$754 mil­lion (TT$5.127 bil­lion) in the ac­tu­al val­ue of the fund over the last nine months since Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Ex­clud­ing a de­posit made in De­cem­ber 2022, the fund has gen­er­at­ed com­pre­hen­sive in­come of al­most US$600 mil­lion since then, the min­is­ter added.

“The fig­ures, da­ta and con­clu­sions pub­lished in the Sun­day Ex­press ar­ti­cle of June 11, 2023, on the HSF are over eight months old, out of date, mis­lead­ing and whol­ly ir­rel­e­vant be­cause the val­ue of the fund fluc­tu­ates over time, as do all sov­er­eign wealth funds, since these funds re­act to the per­for­mance of glob­al stock mar­kets and fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments.

“This is il­lus­trat­ed by the fact that the net as­set val­ue of the HSF in­creased by US$327 mil­lion (TT$2.224 bil­lion) in the last six months, be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2023, and June 9, 2023, with­out any de­posits in­to the fund from the Gov­ern­ment dur­ing that pe­ri­od,” Im­bert added.

The most re­cent pub­licly avail­able re­port of the HSF is for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2022 to De­cem­ber 31, 2022. The quar­ter­ly re­port plus the an­nu­al re­port of the HSF for the pe­ri­od end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011 were both pub­lished on the Min­istry of Fi­nance web­site on June 7. In dis­clos­ing the net as­set val­ue of the HSF as at June 9, 2023, Im­bert cit­ed in­for­ma­tion that is not avail­able to the pub­lic.

He al­so not­ed that a fur­ther il­lus­tra­tion of the volatil­i­ty of glob­al mar­kets is the fact that dur­ing the two-month pe­ri­od May 15, 2020, to June 19, 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the HSF in­creased in val­ue by US$297 mil­lion (TT$2.019 bil­lion).

“More strik­ing­ly, again dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, dur­ing the two-week pe­ri­od April 3, 2020, to April 17, 2020, the val­ue of the fund in­creased by US$286 mil­lion (TT$1.945 bil­lion) in just 14 days. If the in­vert­ed log­ic of the Ex­press ar­ti­cle is to be fol­lowed, the fund man­agers should have re­ceived a na­tion­al award for earn­ing al­most TT$2 bil­lion in two weeks in 2020,” the fi­nance min­is­ter fur­ther not­ed.

Al­so, he said the an­nu­al re­port of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund for the 12-month pe­ri­od end­ing on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022 was laid in Par­lia­ment on Feb­ru­ary 3, 2023, over five months ago, and has there­fore been a pub­lic doc­u­ment for 129 days.

“It is cu­ri­ous that the Ex­press wait­ed five months to com­ment on that out­dat­ed re­port,” Im­bert added.