Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, an­nounced yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment would sell the State's 49 per cent share­hold­ing in the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, Cli­co, in the 2025 fis­cal year, which be­gins to­day.

Im­bert said the sale of Cli­co is one of sev­er­al spe­cial projects, which the Gov­ern­ment ex­pects "to gen­er­ate much-need­ed rev­enue, and cre­ate new jobs, to di­vest state as­sets that are bet­ter man­aged by the pri­vate sec­tor, to en­cour­age di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment, and lo­cal in­vest­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the tourism sec­tor."

Among the spe­cial projects Im­bert out­lined were the sale or lease of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the sale or lease of the Magde­le­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort and a re­quest for pro­pos­als to de­vel­op a yacht­ing ma­ri­na on lands cur­rent­ly be­ing ac­quired from the To­ba­go Plan­ta­tions Es­tate. The Magde­le­na Ho­tel is ad­ja­cent to the To­ba­go Plan­ta­tions Es­tate.

He al­so said the spe­cial projects would in­clude a new five-star in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed re­sort ho­tel on the Gov­ern­ment-owned Buc­coo Es­tate in To­ba­go. That es­tate, which is es­ti­mat­ed to be 398.42 acres, was ac­quired by the Gov­ern­ment from Cli­co for $174.80 mil­lion in 2017. The ac­qui­si­tion of the Buc­coo Es­tate oc­cured as a re­sult of Cor­po­ra­tion Sole's pur­chase of 100 per cent of the com­mon stock of Oc­ci­den­tal In­vest­ments Ltd and Ocean­ic Prop­er­ties Ltd. The Gov­ern­ment used the Buc­coo Es­tate as part of its ne­go­ti­a­tion with the San­dals group to at­tract the Ja­maican-owned ho­tel re­sort com­pa­ny to build a San­dals re­sort and a Beach­es ho­tel on the land. The in­ter­est of San­dals was with­drawn fol­low­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal and oth­er crit­i­cism of the ven­ture.

Speak­ing about the sale of the 49 per cent share­hold­ing in Cli­co, Im­bert said the com­pa­ny "is no longer con­sid­ered to be of strate­gic im­por­tance to the Gov­ern­ment and its di­vest­ment will earn sev­er­al bil­lion dol­lars in rev­enue for the Gov­ern­ment, to see us through the fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties of the next few years."

In the 2025 Draft Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue, the sale of as­sets is pro­ject­ed to gen­er­ate $4 bil­lion, which is 7.4 per cent of the $54.2 bil­lion the Gov­ern­ment ex­pects to gen­er­ate in the 2025 fis­cal year. The doc­u­ment does not spec­i­fy what as­sets are go­ing to be sold to raise the $4 bil­lion.

In its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023, Cli­co de­clared prof­it af­ter tax of $2.30 bil­lion, which rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of 271 per cent com­pared with the prof­it of $621.42 mil­lion in 2022. Most of the prof­it the in­sur­er gen­er­at­ed in 2023 came from the sale of its 56.53 per cent share­hold­ing in its sub­sidiary, Methanol Hold­ings In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd (MHIL) on De­cem­ber 22, 2023. MHIL was sold to Con­sol­i­dat­ed En­er­gy Ltd, which is a com­pa­ny owned by the Switzer­land-based Pro­man group.

"The pro­ceeds on the sale of sub­sidiary, net of cash dis­posed and di­rect cost was $1,562,618. By this trans­ac­tion Cli­co ef­fec­tive­ly re­lin­quished con­trol of MHIL and the group recog­nised a gain of $1,990,223 on the sale," ac­cord­ing to Cli­co's 2023 au­dit­ed, con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cials.

On Sep­tem­ber 30, 2019, the Cen­tral Bank an­nounced that the lo­cal sub­sidiary of the Sagi­cor group had been cho­sen to ac­quire the tra­di­tion­al in­sur­ance port­fo­lios of both Cli­co and British Amer­i­can (Trinidad).

Cli­co's to­tal as­sets as at the end of De­cem­ber 2023 amount­ed to $12 bil­lion. Of the $12 bil­lion in as­sets, $7.95 bil­lion com­prised Gov­ern­ment bonds.

One of the eq­ui­ty as­sets that re­mains on Cli­co's books is a 42 per cent stake in CL World Brands, a Scot­land-based com­pa­ny that owns shares in An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd. The rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny's largest share­hold­er is Rumpro Com­pa­ny Ltd, which owns 44.97 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra.

Cor­po­ra­tion Sole owns 29.97 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra, through its own­er­ship of 100 per cent of Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny