Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the coun­try's di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion at­tempts are be­ing recog­nised, fol­low­ing the re­cent coun­try rat­ing af­firmed by in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings agency Moody's.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Fi­nance not­ed that Moody's af­firmed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s rat­ing at Ba2 with a sta­ble out­look on De­cem­ber 16, 2024.

"This af­fir­ma­tion is un­der­pinned by the coun­try's re­turn to sus­tained growth, pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by the non-en­er­gy sec­tor. De­spite low­er-than-pro­ject­ed en­er­gy rev­enues in fis­cal year 2024, which have in­creased the fis­cal deficit to 4.8 per cent of GDP from 1.7 per cent in fis­cal year 2023, Moody's rec­og­nizes the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal rev­enue di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts, as ev­i­denced by the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) in 2025," the min­istry said.

The re­lease con­tin­ued, "The rat­ing agency al­so ac­knowl­edges that po­ten­tial fis­cal risks are mit­i­gat­ed by sig­nif­i­cant buffers. These in­clude the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) and cash re­serves amount­ing to more than 40 per cent of GDP in fis­cal year 2024."

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert is qout­ed in the news re­lease as stress­ing that the rat­ing al­so re­flect­ed the gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of struc­tur­al, fis­cal and eco­nom­ic re­forms.

Moody’s in­di­cat­ed that the out­look on the cur­rent Ba2 rat­ing re­mains sta­ble, as a re­sult of the de­cline in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign-ex­change re­serves in ear­ly 2024 due to re­duced en­er­gy re­ceipts stem­ming from de­clin­ing gas prices.

The rat­ing agency how­ev­er stat­ed that, “Shell T&T's in­vest­ment de­ci­sion re­duces un­cer­tain­ty re­gard­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go's fu­ture hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­tion prospects and aligns with our base­line view about re­newed ex­pan­sion in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion start­ing 2027.”

Im­bert said, “Our coun­try is in­creas­ing­ly at­tract­ing oil and gas in­vest­ment and Moody's rec­og­nizes this.”

The Min­is­ter al­so point­ed out that oth­er gas projects like the Os­prey or the Cas­cadu­ra fields should add pro­duc­tion this year and sup­port T&T's growth prospects.

The Min­is­ter said, “The out­look for the medi­um term is very promis­ing.”

The Min­istry ex­plained that T&T's eco­nom­ic strengths were be­ing recog­nised by in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

The re­lease stat­ed, "In June 2024, the na­tion is­sued a 10-year U.S. $750 mil­lion bond at a very at­trac­tive rate of 2.18% over U.S. Trea­sury Notes. To­day, yields on Trinidad and To­ba­go's debt are low­er than those of coun­tries rat­ed two or three notch­es high­er by Moody’s, such as Pana­ma (Baa3) and Colom­bia (Baa2)."

The Min­istry stat­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­rent­ly has in­vest­ment grade rat­ings of BBB- from S&P and AA from Cari­CRIS, re­flect­ing the coun­try's strong eco­nom­ic fun­da­men­tals and pru­dent fis­cal man­age­ment.