Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund (NIF) has now paid out $897.6 mil­lion div­i­dends to its faith­ful in­vestors—many of whom are just “reg­u­lar” cit­i­zens.

In a post on so­cial me­dia the PM said the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio on which NIF is based has grown solid­ly in that time, in­creas­ing in val­ue from $7.9 bil­lion to $10.02 bil­lion. A 26.8 per cent in­crease, Row­ley added.

“When the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund was launched in 2018, the Op­po­si­tion at­tempt­ed to un­der­mine it by la­belling it a ponzi scheme,” Row­ley said, adding that in the four years since its suc­cess­ful launch, the Op­po­si­tion been proven wrong.

“Thank you GORTT! (Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T) And thank you, NIF! Per­for­mance beats ole talk every time!,” the post added.

In a post­ing on the T&T Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day NIF made the eighth dis­tri­b­u­tion in­ter­est pay­ment of $112.2 mil­lion to its over 7,500 bond hold­ers on the three se­ries of its $4.0 bil­lion bond.

On Feb­ru­ary 9, 2023, NIF will make the ninth se­mi-an­nu­al coupon pay­ment to bond hold­ers.

“Notwith­stand­ing the cur­rent glob­al chal­lenges in­clud­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of COVID-19 with its many vari­ants, in­creased en­er­gy costs and sup­ply chain is­sues, our in­vestee com­pa­nies have been suc­cess­ful­ly putting in­creased en­er­gy and fo­cus around their key pri­or­i­ties,” NIF said.

The NIF is a com­pa­ny cre­at­ed by its sole share­hold­er, Gov­ern­ment to hold five as­sets.

These as­sets were re­ceived by the Gov­ern­ment as pro­ceeds from the share­hold­ing of cer­tain as­sets of Cli­co (un­der su­per­vi­sion of Cen­tral Bank) and CIB, as well as an ap­pro­pri­ate share­hold­ing of TGU owned by the Gov­ern­ment.

Since 2009, the Gov­ern­ment has sought to re­cov­er funds owed to it aris­ing from the bail out of Cli­co and CIB which re­sult­ed in, Cli­co and CIB trans­fer­ring cer­tain as­sets held by them to the Gov­ern­ment, some of which, in ad­di­tion to the share­hold­ing of TGU, were trans­ferred to NIF.