Ramdeen: NGC’s exit from Moody’s is strategic fit, not ‘rating shopping’

Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen is de­fend­ing the state com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to end its 21-year re­la­tion­ship with in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings agency Moody’s, say­ing the move does not rep­re­sent a re­treat from trans­paren­cy or in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny.

In a let­ter re­spond­ing to crit­i­cism from for­mer min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, Ramdeen said NGC had in­stead en­gaged Fitch Rat­ings while main­tain­ing its ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ship with S&P Glob­al Rat­ings.

Ramdeen said all three agen­cies are in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised mem­bers of the “Big Three” cred­it rat­ings firms and ar­gued the de­ci­sion was part of a strate­gic re­align­ment rather than an at­tempt to avoid over­sight.

“The sug­ges­tion that NGC is some­how re­treat­ing from scruti­ny is plain­ly ab­surd,” Ramdeen wrote.

He said cred­it rat­ings are paid pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and NGC was en­ti­tled to as­sess fac­tors in­clud­ing cost, method­ol­o­gy, in­vestor reach, ser­vice qual­i­ty and strate­gic fit when de­cid­ing which agen­cies to re­tain.

Ramdeen re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions NGC was “rat­ing shop­ping”, say­ing the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to main­tain in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings cov­er­age through S&P and Fitch.

“The prop­er ques­tion is whether the agen­cies en­gaged are in­de­pen­dent, com­pe­tent, rep­utable and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised,” he wrote.

Ramdeen al­so out­lined sev­er­al mea­sures he said had been im­ple­ment­ed since the cur­rent board as­sumed of­fice, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of an ex­pen­di­ture re­view com­mit­tee which he claimed re­duced op­er­at­ing costs by more than TT$700 mil­lion in ten months.

He said NGC had al­so moved to ad­dress pay­ment is­sues linked to gas sup­plied to T&TEC, re­struc­ture re­la­tion­ships with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor, en­cour­age ex­plo­ration and pur­sue eq­ui­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion in up­stream gas projects to se­cure fu­ture sup­ply.

Ramdeen said the com­pa­ny was al­so pur­su­ing down­stream in­vest­ments aimed at gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change rev­enue.

Ac­cord­ing to the NGC chair­man, of­fi­cials from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund had in­di­cat­ed ear­li­er this year that sev­er­al of the re­forms be­ing pur­sued aligned with rec­om­men­da­tions long made for im­prov­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic re­silience.

He ar­gued the com­pa­ny in­her­it­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, in­clud­ing de­clin­ing gas pro­duc­tion, for­eign ex­change pres­sures and weak­ened in­vestor con­fi­dence.

Ramdeen said NGC would con­tin­ue main­tain­ing in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings cov­er­age, pub­lish­ing fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­cat­ing with in­vestors.

The is­sue emerged af­ter Moody’s with­drew NGC’s Ba2 cor­po­rate fam­i­ly rat­ing, ba2 base­line cred­it as­sess­ment and Ba2 se­nior un­se­cured notes rat­ing, say­ing the com­pa­ny had ceased par­tic­i­pat­ing in the rat­ings process.

NGC lat­er said the split re­flect­ed “fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences” over Moody’s ap­proach to as­sess­ing sov­er­eign link­age and state-owned en­ter­pris­es. The com­pa­ny ar­gued Moody’s method­ol­o­gy failed to ful­ly recog­nise NGC’s stand­alone fi­nan­cial strength and re­cent per­for­mance im­prove­ments, in­clud­ing a pro­ject­ed TT$3.3 bil­lion prof­it af­ter tax for 2025.

The de­vel­op­ment drew crit­i­cism from for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who de­scribed the with­draw­al as a “se­ri­ous red flag” for the coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor and wider econ­o­my.