Fit as a “young boy,” Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­turns home from Cal­i­for­nia next Tues­day, hav­ing not had to do any heart surgery and “with all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a young per­son.”

This was the de­scrip­tion con­veyed by Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day as he an­nounced Row­ley’s an­tic­i­pat­ed re­turn.

Row­ley, who turns 70 in Oc­to­ber, went to Cal­i­for­nia 10 days ago - Car­ni­val Tues­day - to do heart tests on soft plaque which had been found in his artery in 2016 and sub­se­quent­ly dis­cov­ered to have got­ten big­ger. Pri­or to his de­par­ture, Row­ley had said his lo­cal doc­tor told him on Feb­ru­ary 18 that the mat­ter need­ed im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion.

While in Cal­i­for­nia - a lo­ca­tion where he’d un­der­gone Prostate Speci­fi­ca Anti­gen (PSA) tests in 2016- Row­ley un­der­went batch­es of tests on March 6 and 9 and up to Mon­day gone.

On Tues­day, Row­ley post­ed a Face­book pic­ture with his car­di­ol­o­gist - all smiles - say­ing he was told that day there’s no need for surgery. How­ev­er, he said he’d re­main un­der ob­ser­va­tion a few more days and re­turn home soon.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, Im­bert said Row­ley will be re­turn­ing via a Caribbean Air­lines flight from New York.

Im­bert said, “I’m ad­vised by the Prime Min­is­ter that his test pro­ce­dures went very well. The Face­book post­ing that ap­peared was ac­cu­rate: the Prime Min­is­ter doesn’t re­quire surgery and we’re thank­ful our prayers have been an­swered and we look for­ward to his re­turn Tues­day.

“I just got a lit­tle up­date that he’s do­ing very well. He just did a stress test and has ‘all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a young per­son’ - that’s what I’m told,” Im­bert added, smil­ing.

“So that’s very good news for us. Our prayers have been an­swered.”

On a re­cent Reuters re­port about Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um’s talks with over­seas fi­nanciers, Im­bert said the talks with the fi­nanciers and rat­ing agen­cies are go­ing well. He said the talks were on re­fi­nanc­ing of Petrotrin’s US$850 mil­lion bond and to raise fi­nance for Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um’s op­er­a­tions. The com­pa­ny is the hold­ing com­pa­ny which suc­ceed­ed Petrotrin, which was re­struc­tured last year.

The bond is due for pay­ment in Au­gust. An­oth­er US$750m bond is due in 2022. Im­bert said fi­nanciers were see­ing po­ten­tial in the com­pa­ny.

—Gail Alexan­der