In this space on January 15, 2026, under the headline, ‘When will T&T’s foreign reserves run out?’ I reported the following;
“The December 2025 Economic DataPack indicates that T&T’s net official foreign reserves at the end of November last year totalled US$4.878 billion, which was equal to 5.7 months of import cover. T&T’s net official foreign reserves at the end of November 2023, indicating that in the two-year period, the country’s foreign reserves declined by US$1.390 billion, or 22.17 per cent. That two-year snapshot indicates that the average annual depletion rate of T&T’s foreign reserves was US$695 million or by about 11 per cent.”
When I checked the Central Bank’s Data Centre on Saturday, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that T&T’s net official reserves had grown by US$491 million from US$4.878 billion in November to US$5.369 billion in December. That is an increase of 10 per cent. That US$491 million increase in December was net of the normal injections, totalling about US$200 million a month, that the Government, through the Central Bank, makes to authorised dealers, public sector companies and institutions like the Eximbank of T&T
When I checked with Government sources, I was reliably informed that of the US$491 million increase in reserves:
* US$150 million came from a fixed-rate, three-year, senior unsecured bond arranged by Guardian Group Trust Ltd that is paying interest of 6 per cent a year;
* US$14.5 million from the settlement by Swiss petrochemical giant, Proman, of the Clico Energy matter;
* Dividends from State-owned companies; and
* Private and State-owned companies converting their US dollars to TT dollars because they needed liquidity to make their local payments.
The information in the four bullet points above that was the most surprising was the US$14.5 million boost to T&T’s foreign reserves from the settlement with Proman of the Clico Energy matter. That has to be a first payment.
In this space, in the January 22 publication of this magazine, under the headline, ‘What did T&T get from Proman for Clico Energy?’ it was reported that High Court judge Devindra Rampersad voided the controversial sale of a majority stake in Clico Energy to Proman, which is the largest operator on the Point Lisas Industrial Estate.
Justice Rampersad ordered:
• The restoration of 51 per cent shareholding in Clico Energy (which was renamed Process Energy Trinidad Ltd) to CL Financial;
• An account and payment to CL Financial of all dividends and distributions made after the purchase and sale agreement. According to a 2022 judgment in the Court of Appeal by Justice Malcolm Holdip, the distributions and dividends generated by Clico Energy between February 2009 and September 2021, amounted to US$185,916,295.05 plus interest at 2.5 per cent per annum;
• The return of the US$46.5 million consideration for the sale of Clico Energy to Proman; and
• The payment of the costs of the action by Proman and Duprey to CL Financial.
The January 22 column also reported that Justice Rampersad suggested that the money that Proman owed CL Financial (US$185.91 million) could be set off against the money CL Financial owed Proman (US$46.5 million). The result of the setting off, or netting off of those two numbers is US$139.41 million. The Court of Appeal did not interfere with Justice Rampersad’s order in that regard.
Justice Rampersad also directed, and the Court of Appeal concurred, that an interest rate of 2.5 per cent per annum should be added to the set-off figure of US$139.41 million. If that is done, and the length of time of the interest is extended from September 2021 to December 2025 (the presumed date of the settlement agreement), then the compounded interest over 16 years would be US$90.074 million.
So if the set-off amount of US$139.41 million is added to the compounded interest of US$90.07 million, then the amount of money Proman owes CL Financial grows to US$229.48 million.
Without calculating the restoration of the value of 51 per cent of Clico Energy, therefore, the amount of money owed to CL Financial, in liquidation, should be US$229.48 million, which is substantially more than the US$14.5 million first payment.
Some clarity on this issue from the Government would be very useful.
Why did TTNGL postpone annual meeting
On January 30, publicly listed TTNGL issued a terse three-paragraph notice, announcing that “due to unforeseen circumstances,” the company’s 10th annual meeting, which was scheduled to be held today at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre, had been postponed.
The notice continued that shareholders would be notified of the rescheduled date in due course by further notice and that TTNGL regretted any inconvenience arising from the postponement.
As I disclosed last week, I purchased a block of TTNGL shares at $2.65 on January 2, 2026, and sold the block at $4.20 on January 22. A profit of close to 59 per cent for about three weeks is more than enough for me.
But as a former TTNGL shareholder, I found the notice to be disturbingly inadequate.
Surely, material disclosures by public companies require them to provide more information to their shareholders than the annual meeting was postponed “due to unforeseen circumstances.”
TTNGL is not alone in the use of the phrase “due to unforeseen circumstances,” to attempt to explain the postponement of an annual meeting.
In a notice signed by its corporate secretary Dr Sati Jagmohan on October 16, 2025, majority State-owned, publicly listed National Flour Mills (NFM) used the same phrase.
And when on June 19, 2025, majority State-owned Point Lisas Industrial Port Development Corporation (Plipdeco) announced the postponement of its annual meeting, the company’s board of directors provided no reason to its shareholders.
What are the circumstances that the directors of TTNGL and NFM the company could not foresee?
And don’t the shareholders of a company have a right to know more about the circumstances that led to a company postponing its annual meeting than the reason was “unforeseen?”
T&T’s Securities Act defines a material change as, “A change in the business, operations, assets or ownership of an issuer, the disclosure of which would be considered important to a reasonable investor in making an investment decision and includes a decision to implement such a change made by the directors of the issuer or other persons acting in a similar capacity.”
Therefore, any change in a company’s business, operations, assets or ownership that “would be considered important to a reasonable investor in making an investment decision,” is material information that must be disclosed to actual and potential shareholders. And I strongly believe that the materiality of the change must go beyond the company simply stating that the change was unforeseen.
If in the TTNGL case for example, the Trinidad and Tobago Securities and Exchange Commission (TTSEC) had launched an investigation to determine who bought and sold 1,097,027 TTNGL shares on December 3, 2025, 3,538,560 TTNGL shares on December 11 and 1,319,325 shares of the company on January 15, 2026, is that not material information that should be disclosed to the company’s shareholders and its potential shareholders?
If the auditors of TTNGL refused to sign off on the company’s treatment of its impairment issues, given the possibility that there may be further issues with the OFAC licence relating to the development of the Dragon field, would that not be material information?
In the absence of more and better particulars, it is obvious that the TTNGL shareholders are going to speculate about the real reason for the postponement.
And itis not surprising that some of them have chosen to sell their shares in the company, which has resulted in a reversal in February of the 112 per cent share price increase the company reported in January.
