Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Ltd (Cari­CRIS) has low­ered its rat­ings for the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T Ltd's (NGC) US$ 400 mil­lion debt is­sue by one notch to Cari­AA+ (For­eign and Lo­cal Cur­ren­cy) from Cari­AAA on the re­gion­al rat­ing scale, and ttAA+ from ttAAA on the Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) na­tion­al rat­ing scale with a sta­ble out­look.

The re­gion­al rat­ings agency said: "These rat­ings in­di­cate that the lev­el of cred­it­wor­thi­ness of this oblig­a­tion, ad­judged in re­la­tion to oth­er oblig­a­tions in the Caribbean and with­in T&T is high.

"The down­grade is un­der­pinned by the down­grade of the sov­er­eign, and the com­pa­ny's high ex­po­sure to the con­tract­ing en­er­gy sec­tor in T&T, falling en­er­gy prices and con­tin­ued gas sup­ply short­ages. The chal­lenges in the en­er­gy sec­tor have af­fect­ed the Com­pa­ny's rev­enue gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty over the last year."

Cari­CRIS said, how­ev­er, that the en­er­gy com­pa­ny's cred­it­wor­thi­ness con­tin­ues to re­flect its strong liq­uid­i­ty and debt pro­tec­tion mea­sures, though de­te­ri­o­rat­ing as a re­sult of high div­i­dend pay­ments which re­duced cash flow from op­er­a­tions.

Fur­ther sup­port­ing the rat­ings is NGC's strate­gic im­por­tance to the T&T Gov­ern­ment, which in­di­cates the like­li­hood of sup­port in the event of fi­nan­cial dis­tress.