The Gov­ern­ment with­drew US$160.38 mil­lion ($1.09 bil­lion) from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund on De­cem­ber 18, 2023, ac­cord­ing to the re­port of T&T’s rainy-day, sov­er­eign wealth fund for the three months end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

The HSF quar­ter­ly re­port does not state what the US$160.38 mil­lion was used for, ex­cept that the with­draw­al was done in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 15 of the HSF Act (2007).

That sec­tion states, “... where the pe­tro­le­um rev­enues col­lect­ed in any fi­nan­cial year fall be­low the es­ti­mat­ed pe­tro­le­um rev­enues for that fi­nan­cial year by at least ten per cent, with­drawals may be made from the fund as fol­lows, whichev­er is the less­er amount:

a) ei­ther 60 per cent of the amount of the short­fall of pe­tro­le­um rev­enues for that year; or

b) Twen­ty-five per cent of the bal­ance stand­ing to the cred­it of the Fund at the be­gin­ning of that year.”

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

Al­though US$160.38 mil­lion was with­drawn from the HSF, the val­ue of the Fund at De­cem­ber 31, 2023, was ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$268.5 mil­lion high­er than the pre­vi­ous quar­ter’s clos­ing val­ue of US$5.390 bil­lion.

“The to­tal net as­set val­ue of the Fund as at the end of De­cem­ber 31, 2023 was US$5.658 bil­lion, com­pared to US$5.390 bil­lion as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023. Of this to­tal, the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio was val­ued at US$5.656 bil­lion, while the re­main­ing por­tion was held in op­er­at­ing cash ac­counts to meet the day-to-day ex­pens­es that arise from the man­age­ment of the Fund,” ac­cord­ing to the quar­ter­ly re­port.

The re­port said that dur­ing the quar­ter end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023, the HSF’s in­vest­ment port­fo­lio rose by 8.08 per cent.

“This pos­i­tive per­for­mance was dri­ven by strong gains with­in both the eq­ui­ty and fixed in­come man­dates,” said the HSF re­port. For the quar­ter, the HSF’s US core do­mes­tic eq­ui­ties rose by 13.03 per cent and its non-US core in­ter­na­tion­al eq­ui­ties in­creased by 11.27 per cent.

The HSF 2023 an­nu­al re­port states that a de­posit of US$182.21 mil­lion to the HSF was made on De­cem­ber 23, 2022.

Ac­cord­ing to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port on the HSF’s 2023 an­nu­al re­port, the tim­ing of the de­posit of US$182.21 mil­lion is in con­tra­ven­tion of the re­quire­ments of the act.

That re­port, which was signed by Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass on No­vem­ber 29, 2023, cit­ed sec­tions 13 (2) and 13 (4) of the HSF Act.

Sec­tion 13 (2) of the HSF Act states: “The de­posits re­ferred to in sub­sec­tion (1) shall be made no lat­er than the end of the month fol­low­ing the quar­ter in re­spect of which the de­posit was cal­cu­lat­ed.”

Sec­tion 13 (4) states, “For the pur­pos­es of this sec­tion ‘quar­ter’ means a three-month pe­ri­od end­ing De­cem­ber 31, March 31, June 30 and Deptem­ber 30.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port, “A de­posit to the Fund of US$182,213,278 was made on De­cem­ber 23, 2022. This de­posit re­lat­ed to the quar­ter Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber 2022, and the date of cal­cu­la­tion pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance was Oc­to­ber 26, 2022.”