Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Colm Im­bert, said yes­ter­day that be­tween Oc­to­ber 2023 and June 2024, the pub­lic debt in­creased by $4.07 bil­lion.

This in­for­ma­tion about T&T's in­debt­ed­ness came in a news re­lease, in re­sponse to an ar­ti­cle in yes­ter­day's T&T Guardian, that was head­lined 'Gov­ern­ment bor­rows $14B in 9 months'.

That ar­ti­cle re­port­ed that cen­tral gov­ern­ment and three state en­ter­pris­es raised over $14 bil­lion in debt be­tween Oc­to­ber 2023 and June 2024, cit­ing in­for­ma­tion from the Cen­tral Bank’s May 2024 Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port and from the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

The Gov­ern­ment and the state en­ter­pris­es is­sued bonds to­talling $9.17 bil­lion on the do­mes­tic cap­i­tal mar­ket mon­ey and cen­tral gov­ern­ment raised US$750 mil­lion ($5.06 bil­lion) on the in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­ket. On June 18, the Gov­ern­ment is­sued the 10-year US$750 mil­lion bond, at an in­ter­est rate of 6.40 per cent.

In its lat­est Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port, the Cen­tral Bank in­di­cat­ed that its pro­vi­sion­al da­ta sug­gest­ed that for the eight months end­ing May 2024, the pri­ma­ry debt mar­ket record­ed 14 bond is­sues, rais­ing $9.17 bil­lion.

“The Gov­ern­ment was the pri­ma­ry bor­row­er, is­su­ing 11 bonds at $8.07 bil­lion via pri­vate place­ments, while three state en­ter­pris­es fi­nanced $1.10 bil­lion,” the re­port stat­ed.

In his re­sponse yes­ter­day, Im­bert said over the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2023 to June 2024, the Gov­ern­ment made cen­tral gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed prin­ci­pal re­pay­ments to­talling $9.23 bil­lion, of which cen­tral gov­ern­ment was $6.8 bil­lion and gov­ern­ment guar­an­teed was $2.43 bil­lion. These re­pay­ments had the ef­fect of re­duc­ing the net pub­lic debt by $9.23 bil­lion.

"Fur­ther, over the same pe­ri­od, a to­tal of $2.67 bil­lion in debt in­volved re­fi­nanc­ing of Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and Gov­ern­ment Guar­an­teed debt, which did not in­crease the pub­lic debt," said Im­bert.

He said prin­ci­pal re­pay­ments and bor­row­ing for re­fi­nanc­ing must al­ways there­fore be de­duct­ed from the to­tal gov­ern­ment debt fi­nanc­ing for any pe­ri­od to get the true lev­el of bor­row­ing.