Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor and econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs says she is hope­ful lin­ger­ing ques­tions sur­round­ing the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (NGC) de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue its re­la­tion­ship with Moody’s In­vestors Ser­vice will be ad­dressed dur­ing the up­com­ing mid-year bud­get re­view.

“All of these things could lead one to the con­clu­sion that some­thing is not adding up, and I think the op­por­tu­ni­ty would present it­self at the mid-year re­view for us to have clar­i­ty as a coun­try mov­ing for­ward, be­cause it will im­pact in­vestors, it could im­pact in­vestor con­fi­dence,” she said.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is yet to an­nounce the date for the mid-year bud­get re­view.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Attzs said the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the sep­a­ra­tion be­tween NGC and the in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ings agency could raise con­cerns about trans­paren­cy and gov­er­nance, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en NGC’s crit­i­cal role in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my.

Dr Attzs not­ed that while me­dia re­ports have sug­gest­ed a part­ing of ways, it re­mains un­clear whether the de­ci­sion was ini­ti­at­ed by NGC or Moody’s.

She ex­plained that an in­de­pen­dent cred­it rat­ing pro­vides an im­por­tant ex­ter­nal as­sess­ment of a com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial stand­ing and gov­er­nance prac­tices, liken­ing it to a per­son­al cred­it score that of­fers as­sur­ance of fi­nan­cial cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Attzs, the loss of that in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment re­moves an im­por­tant lay­er of scruti­ny for one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant state en­ter­pris­es.

“NGC is the en­gine of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This is not a small play­er,” she said, stress­ing that ex­ter­nal rat­ings are vi­tal in help­ing the com­pa­ny and, by ex­ten­sion, the coun­try se­cure pref­er­en­tial bor­row­ing rates on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Her com­ments come against the back­drop of Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed in­ten­tion in the last bud­get to bor­row ap­prox­i­mate­ly $19 bil­lion, with a sub­stan­tial por­tion ex­pect­ed to be sourced in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor said the mid-year bud­get re­view would pro­vide an im­por­tant op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Gov­ern­ment to of­fer clar­i­ty and re­as­sure the pop­u­la­tion that there are no gov­er­nance con­cerns.

She ar­gued that while the re­view is tra­di­tion­al­ly fo­cused on rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture up­dates, an is­sue of this mag­ni­tude should form part of the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion.