HSF assets rise to US$6.6B despite $410M withdrawal

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) record­ed a slight in­crease in to­tal as­sets for the fis­cal year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, de­spite a with­draw­al of more than US$410 mil­lion dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

This is ac­cord­ing to the Re­port of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on the HSF for the fis­cal year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 2025, which was laid in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day by Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate Leader Dar­rell Al­la­har.

The re­port stat­ed that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al sub­mit­ted the doc­u­ment to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go on No­vem­ber 27, 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the fund’s to­tal as­sets stood at US$6.445 bil­lion as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

By Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, the fund’s as­sets had in­creased to US$6.608 bil­lion.

How­ev­er, the re­port showed that US$410,775,703 was with­drawn from the fund dur­ing the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, un­der Sec­tion 15 of the HSF Act. The re­port did not spec­i­fy which ad­min­is­tra­tion au­tho­rised the with­draw­al.

It al­so not­ed that no cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tions were made to the fund dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der re­view.

Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wan­tee Ram­dass said the fund’s fi­nan­cial state­ments had been au­dit­ed and were fair­ly pre­sent­ed.

“In my opin­ion, the ac­com­pa­ny­ing fi­nan­cial state­ments present fair­ly, in all ma­te­r­i­al re­spects, the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of the fund as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, and its fi­nan­cial per­for­mance and cash flows for the year then end­ed in ac­cor­dance with In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Re­port­ing Stan­dards,” Ram­dass stat­ed.

How­ev­er, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al al­so high­light­ed a com­pli­ance is­sue in­volv­ing the fund’s Board of Gov­er­nors.

She not­ed that Sec­tion 5(1) of the HSF Act re­quires the board to meet at least once every two suc­ces­sive months.

“The ab­sence of a con­sti­tut­ed Board of Gov­er­nors from May 17, 2025 to Au­gust 19, 2025 led to non-com­pli­ance with this statu­to­ry oblig­a­tion,” Ram­dass stat­ed.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al al­so rec­om­mend­ed amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion to pro­vide greater clar­i­ty re­gard­ing de­posits to the fund.

The re­port was laid amid a le­gal dis­pute over the tim­ing of its pre­sen­ta­tion to Par­lia­ment.

On Feb­ru­ary 11, at­tor­neys Ran­dall Mitchell and Stu­art Young, SC, rep­re­sent­ing Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) of­fi­cial Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, wrote to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo re­gard­ing the re­port.

The let­ter claimed Tan­coo had failed to meet the Jan­u­ary 31, 2026 dead­line stip­u­lat­ed by law for lay­ing the re­port in Par­lia­ment.

The at­tor­neys re­quest­ed that the min­is­ter pro­vide, with­in 30 days of re­ceiv­ing the let­ter, an ex­pla­na­tion for the de­lay and in­di­cate when the re­port would be pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment.

They warned that fail­ure to do so could re­sult in le­gal ac­tion, in­clud­ing a re­quest for ju­di­cial re­view and a court or­der com­pelling the re­port to be laid.

Last night, Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of­fi­cials did not com­ment on the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to lay the re­port in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day—one day be­fore the dead­line set by the at­tor­neys.