Fac­ing a tight for­eign ex­change mar­ket, PriceS­mart’s Trinidad busi­ness­es have turned to the Ja­maican cap­i­tal mar­kets and Trinida­di­an banks to source up to US$65 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of its dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre and set­tle­ment of its out­stand­ing payables.

The in­for­ma­tion was re­vealed in PriceS­mart Inc’s third quar­ter re­port for the pe­ri­od end­ing May 31. PSMT Trinidad/To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (PSMT TT) has tapped GK Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Ltd in Ja­maica to arrange a US$16 mil­lion bond which will be is­sued in Ja­maican dol­lars and in­dexed to Unit­ed States dol­lars (USD). PSMT TT could po­ten­tial­ly place an ad­di­tion­al US$13.5 mil­lion equiv­a­lent of this bond which will bear a 7.25 per cent in­ter­est rate and a four-year tenure.

PSMT TT will pledge a TTD equiv­a­lent of 1.05 times the prin­ci­pal amount (US$16.80 mil­lion) in a mon­ey mar­ket mu­tu­al fund at the Trinidad & To­ba­go Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion or an en­ti­ty ap­proved by the lenders. PSMT TT will al­lo­cate a min­i­mum of US$1.875 mil­lion to a sink­ing fund, to be main­tained with GK Cap­i­tal. The debt fa­cil­i­ty will be backed by a cor­po­rate guar­an­tee from af­fil­i­ate com­pa­ny PriceS­mart Ja­maica Ltd.

An­oth­er PriceS­mart Trinidad sub­sidiary will en­ter in­to a four-year cash-se­cured syn­di­cat­ed loan to­talling US$20.5 mil­lion, with US$15 mil­lion in US dol­lars and the rest in Ja­maican dol­lars, in­dexed to the US dol­lars. The loan will bear in­ter­est at 7.25 per cent.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a PriceS­mart Trinidad sub­sidiary en­tered in­to a three-year term loan agree­ment for US$15 mil­lion de­nom­i­nat­ed in US dol­lars. That loan is in­dexed to T&T dol­lars (TTD) and will be re­paid in TTD at an 11.5 per cent in­ter­est rate.

“In Ju­ly 2025, the com­pa­ny en­tered in­to the fol­low­ing fi­nanc­ing trans­ac­tions, which we ex­pect to fund in the fourth quar­ter of fis­cal year 2025, to pro­vide our Trinidad sub­sidiary with ad­di­tion­al US dol­lar liq­uid­i­ty need­ed to meet its op­er­a­tional needs and help re­duce the short­fall in US dol­lar sourc­ing due to con­tin­ued illiq­uid for­eign ex­change con­di­tions in that mar­ket,” PriceS­mart re­port­ed.

To tack­le its forex con­straints in T&T, the com­pa­ny’s lo­cal sub­sidiaries bor­rowed a to­tal of US$23 mil­lion be­tween 2021 and 2025, from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in­clud­ing CIBC Caribbean Bank (Trinidad & To­ba­go).

Over the past five years, PriceS­mart’s op­er­a­tions in Trinidad have faced on­go­ing chal­lenges due to lim­it­ed ac­cess to for­eign ex­change. As of May 31, 2025, the com­pa­ny held US$73.9 mil­lion in T&T dol­lar-de­nom­i­nat­ed cash and short-term in­vest­ments that could not be eas­i­ly con­vert­ed to US dol­lars. This com­pares to US$60.2 mil­lion in Au­gust 2024 and a peak of US$100.5 mil­lion in No­vem­ber 2020.

PriceS­mart has four clubs in Trinidad and com­plet­ed the re­mod­el­ling of its Port of Spain lo­ca­tion around Au­gust 2024. The com­pa­ny plans to open dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres in Guatemala, Trinidad and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic for its 2026 fis­cal year, which starts on Sep­tem­ber 1.