Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

There is ten­sion be­tween the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) which led to the post­pone­ment of its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing on June 27.

NFM’s ma­jor share­hold­er is Na­tion­al En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed (NEL), a state-owned in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny that owns 51 per cent of the is­sued share cap­i­tal trad­ed on the lo­cal stock ex­change.

While NEL falls un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, NFM falls un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that de­spite re­quests by the Min­istry of Trade for the com­pa­ny to sub­mit board min­utes, as most state en­ter­pris­es are re­quired to do to their line min­istry, the NFM has not done so for well over a year.

In ad­di­tion, last year the Min­istry wrote to all en­ti­ties un­der their port­fo­lio ask­ing them to freeze salaries for ex­ec­u­tives. In­stead, the NFM re­spond­ed that it re­ceived le­gal ad­vice from a se­nior coun­sel which in­di­cat­ed they are un­der no le­gal oblig­a­tion to ei­ther pro­vide min­utes or to freeze salaries as they have their own pol­i­cy.

The com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to host its 51st an­nu­al meet­ing trig­gered a re­sponse from the State.

The share­hold­er no­tice had list­ed five items for dis­cus­sion at the meet­ing, which in­clud­ed ap­prov­ing a div­i­dend pay­ment of a fi­nal div­i­dend of 10 cents per share and re­ceiv­ing and adopt­ing the con­sol­i­dat­ed au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

It was Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, through NEL, which caused the NFM to post­pone the AGM.

“Share­hold­ers will be ad­vised of the new date in a sub­se­quent an­nounce­ment. NFM deeply re­grets the in­con­ve­nience caused and looks for­ward to see­ing all of you at our resched­uled meet­ing,” stat­ed the no­tice, signed by NFM’s cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Dr Sati Jag­mo­han, which was post­ed on the stock ex­change.

Al­so on the agen­da is the re-elec­tion and elec­tion of all NFM di­rec­tors, in­clud­ing chair­man Nigel Ro­mano, Son­ja Voisin, Karen Shaw, Aliyah Hamel Smith, Ross Alexan­der, Shane Cor­reia, Joanne Salazar, An­nalean In­niss, Varun Ma­haraj, and San­jiv Sookoo.

Ro­mano told the Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day that NEL re­quest­ed that the meet­ing be post­poned for more con­sul­ta­tion on the nom­i­nees on the board for re-elec­tion. He said the AGM will have to take place be­fore Sep­tem­ber.

Asked about ten­sion, he an­swered: “Every­thing is okay with Cor­po­ra­tion Sole.”

One day af­ter the AGM was post­poned, di­rec­tor Aliyah Hamel-Smith ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion.

In its first quar­ter re­sults for 2024, the NFM an­nounced a prof­it af­ter tax of $10.2 mil­lion for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ing March 31, 2024.

“This de­cline in rev­enue was main­ly due to the re­duc­tion in prices as we passed on the re­duc­tion in the cost of grain to our cus­tomers. Notwith­stand­ing, we achieved a 14 per cent in­crease in gross prof­it of $37.2 mil­lion, up from $32.5 mil­lion in 2023. A re­duc­tion in fi­nance costs al­so con­tributed to an in­crease in prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion to $14.5 mil­lion,” Ro­mano said in the com­pa­ny’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2024.

NFM dropped its re­tail price on flour items in Ju­ly 2023 by an av­er­age of 10 per cent. This price drop came short­ly af­ter oth­er flour sup­pli­ers, Nu­trim­ix and Sheik Lisha, an­nounced price re­duc­tions.

“We are al­so mon­i­tor­ing changes in the eco­nom­ic and com­mer­cial en­vi­ron­ment lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly as we fo­cus on of­fer­ing val­ued prod­ucts to sat­is­fy the needs of our cus­tomers.

“In this re­gard, our top pri­or­i­ty for 2024 is per­for­mance man­age­ment to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness of all busi­ness process­es,” he said.

He stressed that the NFM would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on main­tain­ing an ac­cept­able lev­el of prof­itabil­i­ty, which will al­low it to sus­tain op­er­a­tions for the long term, in­vest in new ma­chin­ery and tech­nol­o­gy and weath­er eco­nom­ic down­turns while meet­ing its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.