In de­liv­er­ing the 2026 bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13, 2026, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, out­lined two con­crete pro­pos­als that would pro­vide more op­tions for lo­cal in­vestors who want to de­ploy their TT-dol­lar sav­ings. Those two pro­pos­als were:

* The es­tab­lish­ment of a state-spon­sored Re­al Es­tate In­vest­ment Trust (RE­IT), which he de­scribed as “a land­mark ini­tia­tive to de­moc­ra­tise state-owned as­sets, strength­en and di­ver­si­fy our cap­i­tal mar­ket and broad­en pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in na­tion­al wealth cre­ation;”and

* The launch of a $1 bil­lion NIF bond by the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NIF).

Of the RE­IT, Mr Tan­coo said:

“This is an­oth­er bold step to un­lock new av­enues of non-debt fi­nanc­ing.

‘Through this ve­hi­cle, high-val­ue, in­come-gen­er­at­ing prop­er­ties such as land, of­fice build­ings and com­mer­cial in­fra­struc­ture will be trans­ferred in­to a pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­aged RE­IT.

“Shares will be list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change, al­low­ing both or­di­nary and in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors to earn reg­u­lar div­i­dends from re­al es­tate. At the same time, the State re­tains a strate­gic stake in these as­sets.

“A high-lev­el tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee will be ap­point­ed to guide this process for greater trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Mr Speak­er, this po­si­tion puts Trinidad and To­ba­go as a re­gion­al pi­o­neer in in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing and em­pow­ers our cit­i­zens to share di­rect­ly in the pros­per­i­ty of the na­tion.

“Giv­en the healthy do­mes­tic in­vestor ap­petite, this mea­sure is ex­pect­ed to con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the Gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue stream.”

And speak­ing about the NIF bond, Mr Tan­coo stat­ed:

“This is yet an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty pro­vid­ed by this Gov­ern­ment to af­ford or­di­nary cit­i­zens, small busi­ness­es, and in­sti­tu­tions the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vest and build per­son­al wealth, in a safe, tax-free en­vi­ron­ment with­out in­creas­ing pub­lic debt.

“This bond will be backed by 21 per cent of the share­hold­ing of First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings (FCGFH) val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 bil­lion, while the Gov­ern­ment re­tains in­di­rect and ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship of the ma­jor­i­ty of FCGFH at 60.11 per cent.

“This bond will be is­sued in the sec­ond quar­ter of fis­cal 2026.”

Points to con­sid­er

1) Both of these pro­pos­als are ex­cel­lent ideas be­cause they give in­di­vid­u­als, com­pa­nies and in­sti­tu­tions the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vest in new, TT-dol­lar prod­ucts at a time when there is a dearth of new in­vest­ments;

2) The pro­pos­als are al­so suit­able for the Gov­ern­ment be­cause they al­low it to raise rev­enue, while not adding to the coun­try’s debt stock. Adding new debt is an is­sue that the gov­ern­ment must con­trol, as the most re­cent­ly avail­able debt sta­tis­tics in­di­cate that, as of the end of De­cem­ber 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s to­tal ad­just­ed gen­er­al gov­ern­ment debt out­stand­ing stood at $148.12 bil­lion. That is 84.7 per cent of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP).

Ad­just­ed gen­er­al gov­ern­ment debt, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank, “is com­put­ed as gen­er­al gov­ern­ment debt out­stand­ing—in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed debt of pub­lic en­ti­ties di­rect­ly ser­viced by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment—less the out­stand­ing amounts of all debt in­stru­ments is­sued for mon­e­tary pol­i­cy pur­pos­es, which are ster­ilised in blocked ac­counts held at the Cen­tral Bank;

3) As non-debt in­stru­ments, Mr Tan­coo can of­fer the RE­IT and the new NIF bonds to the es­ti­mat­ed 25,000 pub­lic ser­vants who were owed $3.8 bil­lion up to De­cem­ber 23, last year, as a re­sult of the 10 per cent wage in­crease set­tle­ment with the Gov­ern­ment.

The pub­lic ser­vants re­ceived a par­tial cash ad­vance of the $3.8 bil­lion in De­cem­ber, with the Gov­ern­ment in­sist­ing that the bal­ance owed to them will be a com­bi­na­tion of cash and non-cash op­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er of­fer­ing the RE­IT and the new NIF bonds to pub­lic ser­vants;

4) Mr Tan­coo, in his 2026 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, said the NIF bond would be is­sued in the sec­ond quar­ter of fis­cal 2026. The sec­ond quar­ter of fis­cal 2026 ends next Tues­day, March 31. Mon­day is a pub­lic hol­i­day. There­fore, it would be im­pos­si­ble for the NIF bond to be is­sued in the sec­ond quar­ter of fis­cal 2026.

Mr Tan­coo should ex­plain to the in­vest­ing pub­lic why he has not been able to meet his own dead­line for the NIF bonds;

5) Ac­cord­ing to the First Cit­i­zens group’s 2025 an­nu­al re­port, the State owns 151,077,325 shares in the lo­cal bank, through a com­pa­ny called First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd. If the new NIF bond is backed by 21 per cent of the State hold­ing com­pa­ny’s shares in the First Cit­i­zens group, that means the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to of­fer 31,726,238 shares to the NIF arrange­ment.

First Cit­i­zens closed trad­ing on Tues­day at $34.99. At that price, the 31,726,238 First Cit­i­zens shares in­tend­ed for the new arrange­ment were worth $1.11 bil­lion (31,726,238 X $34.99), which is well short of the $2 bil­lion in­di­cat­ed by Mr Tan­coo in the 2026 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

If the Gov­ern­ment wants to of­fer First Cit­i­zens shares val­ued at $2 bil­lion, the bank’s share price needs to in­crease to $63.03 or the Gov­ern­ment needs to ten­der more of the bank’s shares. For ex­am­ple, at a share price of $35 per First Cit­i­zens share, the Gov­ern­ment would need to ten­der 57,142,875 shares. At $40 per share, the Gov­ern­ment would need to ten­der 50 mil­lion shares.

The maths is not math­s­ing, Mr Tan­coo.

What is the rea­son the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance wants First Cit­i­zens shares val­ued at $2 bil­lion to is­sue a new cor­po­rate as­set-backed NIF bond worth $1 bil­lion?

I be­lieve the rea­son is that the first two it­er­a­tions of NIF held a port­fo­lio of shares worth about twice the val­ue of the bonds that were is­sued.

At the time of its ini­tial launch in Ju­ly 2018, the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio (shares) back­ing the NIF 1 bonds was val­ued at $7.9 bil­lion. The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion is­sued three tranch­es of the NIF 1 bonds val­ued at $4 bil­lion.

In the first quar­ter of 2024, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion is­sued the NIF 2 bond of $400 mil­lion, which was backed by 6,546,417 Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) shares worth about $815 mil­lion, at the time the block of shares was trans­ferred to NIF.

6) As I un­der­stand it, the ba­sis of the NIF bonds is that the in­ter­est re­ceived by the bond­hold­ers most­ly comes from the div­i­dends paid on the un­der­ly­ing as­sets.

For ex­am­ple, NIF 2 re­ceived $39,278,502 in div­i­dends from the $6 per share paid on its hold­ings of 6,546,417 RFHL shares.

NIF 2 was is­sued on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2024, with a face val­ue of $400 mil­lion. It pays a fixed in­ter­est rate of 4.5 per cent a year for a pe­ri­od of five years. There­fore, NIF 2 pays $18 mil­lion in in­ter­est to its bond­hold­ers a year. That in­ter­est would be eas­i­ly cov­ered by the $39.27 mil­lion in div­i­dends that NIF 2 re­ceived in 2025.

As a hy­po­thet­i­cal, if the Gov­ern­ment ten­ders 50 mil­lion First Cit­i­zens shares (at $40 per share) to the new NIF, which is meant to raise $1 bil­lion, and agrees to pay bond­hold­ers an an­nu­al in­ter­est rate of 5 per cent, the to­tal in­ter­est pay­ments would be $50 mil­lion a year.

First Cit­i­zens paid a div­i­dend of $2.50 per share in 2025. If the bank main­tains its div­i­dend go­ing for­ward, it would gen­er­ate $125 mil­lion in div­i­dend pay­ments to the new NIF in a cal­en­dar year, as­sum­ing it held 50 mil­lion First Cit­i­zens shares. The div­i­dend pay­out of $125 mil­lion would more than cov­er the in­ter­est pay­ments of $50 mil­lion, in this ex­am­ple.

If the Gov­ern­ment is re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in strength­en­ing and di­ver­si­fy­ing T&T’s cap­i­tal mar­ket and broad­en­ing pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in na­tion­al wealth cre­ation, it would be per­form­ing a na­tion­al ser­vice if it were to is­sue new NIF bonds pay­ing bond­hold­ers a five per cent an­nu­al re­turn...or more.