Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL), which got ap­proval late Mon­day to re­move a 20 per cent re­stric­tion on share­hold­ing, has signed a sub­scrip­tion agree­ment with Sier­ra Trad­ing, an af­fil­i­ate of Mex­i­can ce­ment gi­ant Ce­mex.Un­der the agree­ment, Sier­ra will par­tic­i­pate in TCL's up­com­ing rights is­sue and has com­mit­ted to ad­di­tion­al cap­i­tal via an agree­ment to un­der­write the rais­ing of cap­i­tal up to a max­i­mum of US$45 mil­lion. This will en­sure that TCL meets a cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion tar­get of at least US$50 mil­lion.

TCL has agreed to grant an ex­clu­sive right to Sier­ra to sub­scrbe and pur­chase any shares in the rights is­sue which are not tak­en up by share­hold­ers. How­ev­er, the amount should not cause Sier­ra's share­hold­ing in TCL to ex­ceed 40 per cent of the lo­cal ce­ment com­pa­ny's out­stand­ing shares.If af­ter the rights is­sue Sier­ra has not achieved at least 35 per cent share­hold­ing in TCL, a pri­vate place­ment of shares in the com­pa­ny will be is­sued.

The agree­ment was signed on Mon­day. Sier­ra cur­rent­ly holds 20 per cent of TCL's share cap­i­tal.

TCL is em­bark­ing on a com­pre­hen­sive re­struc­tur­ing plan aimed at pre­serv­ing its on­go­ing op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny and en­sure its over­all long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty. The plan is be­ing spear­head­ed by a new TCL board in­stalled late last year, head­ed by busi­ness­man Wil­fred Es­pinet and in­clud­ing re­tired pub­lic ser­vant Al­i­son Lewis, Ja­maican busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive Chris Dehring, at­tor­ney Glenn Hamel-Smith, UTC ex­ec­u­tive Nigel Ed­wards and Ce­mex ex­ec­u­tives Car­los Palero and Fran­cis­co Aguil­era.

Late last year, the com­pa­ny put a hold on all pay­ments un­der a debt deal struck with large cred­i­tors af­ter be­ing un­able to cope with $1.7 bil­lion in short-term debt on which it had de­fault­ed.

In a re­lat­ed de­vel­op­ment, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ap­pealed to gov­ern­ment to keep TCL in lo­cal hands. He said a PNM gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to re­view­ing de­vel­op­ment of a rapid rail sys­tem for T&T and if it got the go ahead, TCL will be­come a ma­jor play­er pro­vid­ing se­ri­ous amounts of ce­ment over the five to sev­en year pe­ri­od it would take for the project to be com­plet­ed

"It will be the tax pay­ers who will have to pay more if TCL is in the hands of a for­eign­er who will be in a po­si­tion to de­ter­mine a mo­nop­oly price as against a lo­cal­ly in­dige­nous com­pa­ny that is tak­ing part in in­dige­nous de­vel­op­ment," Row­ley said.