An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has an­nounced that the cur­rent val­ue of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) stands at US$6 bil­lion. 

Im­bert made this state­ment yes­ter­day via a post on X (Twit­ter). 

He said in June 2022, the val­ue of the HSF was US$4.7 bil­lion, which was at­trib­uted to in­sta­bil­i­ty in the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem at that time. 

"Now two years lat­er, be­cause of pru­dent man­age­ment, the val­ue of the HSF has in­creased to US$6 bil­lion, an in­crease of US$1.3 bil­lion,” the fi­nance min­is­ter said. 

Com­ment­ing on the an­nounce­ment Econ­o­mist Ronald Ramkissoon told Guardian Me­dia that the in­crease in the val­ue of the HSF is a very pos­i­tive thing.

He said when the fund was set up in the ear­ly days, sev­er­al econ­o­mists had called for a sep­a­ra­tion of the fund be­tween funds that are to be in­vest­ed for the long term and funds re­quired for fis­cal sta­bil­i­sa­tion. 

“We had sug­gest­ed, and then you had a part of it that would have been nec­es­sary for sta­bil­i­sa­tion,  mean­ing when the price of gas and oil is low, you are then en­ti­tled to draw on the fund. 

As you know, we have done sev­er­al draw­downs over the last few years, which were very much in keep­ing with what the law that sets up the fund, al­lows. 

“So no one can ar­gue that notwith­stand­ing sev­er­al draw­downs made, the fact is that the fund has in­creased, true, be­cause of the wise in­vest­ments, if you like, that have been made. I would still ar­gue for a sep­a­ra­tion of the funds,” Ramkissoon out­lined. 

He not­ed that how the HSF is spent is usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed in the bud­get or mid-year re­view. 

“It is up to the gov­ern­ment of the day, to spend in the way that they think is best. So, yes, they need to be trans­par­ent about what they are spend­ing and what they're ask­ing the mon­ey for, which they do as a mat­ter of course in the nor­mal bud­get, mid-term, to some ex­tent, and then an­nu­al­ly.” 

The HSF's 2023 an­nu­al re­port said that the the fund stood at US$5.39 bil­lion at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2023, a 14.4 per cent in­crease com­pared with the US$4.71 bil­lion at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2022. 

In the sum­ma­ry of the an­nu­al re­port, which was avail­able in May 2024, HSF chair­man Ewart Williams said the Fund re­turned 10.59 per cent for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year, "par­tial­ly re­cov­er­ing from the steep loss­es dur­ing the pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial year, when the Fund de­clined 16.52 per cent." 

Williams said the Fund's pos­i­tive per­for­mance was main­ly dri­ven by its eq­ui­ty in­vest­ments, which re­turned 9.24 per cent as stocks ral­lied more than 20 per cent.