Rapheal John-Lall

The Phoenix Gas Proces­sors' ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO) should be ready by April, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai told the T&T Guardian."The time­line still needs to be firmed up but my es­ti­mate is by April as the au­dit has to be com­plet­ed, the IPO doc­u­ment has to be re­vised and the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (SEC's) ap­proval has to be ob­tained," he said.Howai said an in­de­pen­dent firm of ac­coun­tants will be used for the process.

"We have amend­ed the al­lo­ca­tion for­mu­la and shall be us­ing an in­de­pen­dent firm of ac­coun­tants to as­sist with man­ag­ing the is­sue process," he said. On Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the IPO had been ap­proved at the week­ly Cab­i­net meet­ing. A week ear­li­er, in an ad­dress to the na­tion, she had iden­ti­fied the Phoenix Park IPO as one of the means her Gov­ern­ment would use to raise rev­enue fol­low­ing a $7.4 mil­lion bud­getary short­fall caused by falling oil prices.

There was a sharp rise in oil prices yes­ter­day af­ter the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency pre­dict­ed drillers would re­duce pro­duc­tion this year and that low­er prices would draw de­mand for crude.West Texas In­ter­me­di­ate (WTI), which is with­in the price range of T&T's light sweet crudes, jumped US$2.44, or 5 per cent, to close at US$48.69 a bar­rel.