Young accuses government of “draining” TTNGL accounts to bolster expenditure

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of strip­ping cash from Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL Lim­it­ed (TTNGL), warn­ing that the move could weak­en the state-linked com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to in­vest in fu­ture projects.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side if Par­lia­ment to­day, Young claimed the pay­ment of large div­i­dends ef­fec­tive­ly drains the com­pa­ny’s re­tained earn­ings to boost gov­ern­ment rev­enue.

“They have drained the re­tained earn­ings of TTNGL,” Young said. “By with­draw­ing $2 bil­lion and putting it un­der the guise of div­i­dends, you leave the com­pa­ny bare.”

He warned that re­mov­ing large sums from the com­pa­ny could lim­it its abil­i­ty to re­spond to in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“If an in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty comes along, what do they do? They have to go for loan fi­nanc­ing,” he said.

Young com­pared the sit­u­a­tion to what he said oc­curred at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC) when the PNM gov­ern­ment took of­fice in 2015.

“You loot out $16 bil­lion. If you had those $16 bil­lion as re­tained earn­ings, it is cash that is now avail­able,” he said, ar­gu­ing that those funds could have been used to pur­sue up­stream en­er­gy projects with­out re­ly­ing heav­i­ly on multi­na­tion­al oil and gas com­pa­nies.

Young al­so ques­tioned the broad­er fis­cal ap­proach.

“What we’re see­ing is a drain­ing of all of the cash in state en­ter­pris­es to re­al­ly bol­ster the gov­ern­ment’s ex­pen­di­ture, and that is not how you run a coun­try,” he said.

His com­ments came af­ter the gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans for TTNGL share­hold­ers to re­ceive div­i­dends again af­ter a three-year pause.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal said the TTNGL board would con­sid­er pay­ing about $308 mil­lion in div­i­dends to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11,000 share­hold­ers.

TTNGL chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen said share­hold­ers may al­so have the op­tion of re­ceiv­ing their pay­ments in Unit­ed States dol­lars.

Young said the move could pro­vide some re­lief to small­er in­vestors amid the coun­try’s for­eign ex­change short­age.

“I’m hap­py for some of the small­er TTNGL share­hold­ers be­cause they get some for­eign ex­change in their hands for their in­vest­ments,” he said.

How­ev­er, he ques­tioned the gov­ern­ment’s broad­er in­ten­tions.

“The ques­tion that needs to re­peat­ed­ly be asked is what is the gov­ern­ment do­ing with all of this mon­ey they’re drain­ing out?” Young said.

The div­i­dend pay­ment was ap­proved through a res­o­lu­tion passed at TTNGL’s tenth an­nu­al share­hold­ers’ meet­ing held last week at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.