Auditor General’s Report flags HDC spending, govt rental and rising debt

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

The 2025 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port on the Pub­lic Ac­counts of T&T has un­veiled a se­ries of pro­found fis­cal ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, sig­nalling a cri­sis of ac­count­abil­i­ty that spans from state-run hous­ing projects to high-lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it agree­ments.

The re­port, cov­er­ing the fi­nan­cial year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, was led by Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass.

Among the key is­sues in the re­port, which was laid in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, was the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s use of $78.07 mil­lion ap­proved for hous­ing con­struc­tion and in­fra­struc­ture works to in­stead fund grass cut­ting, garbage col­lec­tion, drain clean­ing and oth­er main­te­nance ac­tiv­i­ties.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al said this spend­ing was out­side the ap­proved pur­pose of the funds and vi­o­lat­ed es­tab­lished fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions.

In ad­di­tion, the au­dit found that $51.97 mil­lion in cheques were col­lect­ed with­out prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

The re­port al­so stat­ed, “The sta­tus re­ports, com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates and con­tract agree­ments be­tween the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and a con­trac­tor for road and drainage up­grade works at Glen­roy Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment, Princess Town were not pro­duced for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion. Ex­pen­di­ture of $11,478,155.04 in­curred on this project could not be ver­i­fied.”

The re­port high­light­ed a rapid­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing fis­cal po­si­tion char­ac­terised by a mas­sive rise in pub­lic debt, which amount­ed to $117,458,301,703.85 by Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025.

“This was an in­crease of $7,320,988,765.68 or 6.65 per cent from the pre­vi­ous year’s fig­ure. Lo­cal loans (Do­mes­tic Debt) was $81,151,833,606.94 and ex­ter­nal loans was $33,595,399,568.81,” the re­port out­lined.

The re­port al­so raised alarm over a mas­sive rent spike and “off-bud­get” debt.

A star­tling 35 per cent surge in gov­ern­ment rent ex­pen­di­ture and the dis­cov­ery of a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment have tak­en cen­tre stage as the find­ings high­light­ed sig­nif­i­cant trans­paren­cy gaps in how the State man­ages its sprawl­ing re­al es­tate port­fo­lio and its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the gov­ern­ment’s to­tal rent bill for the 2025 fi­nan­cial year reached a stag­ger­ing $665.7 mil­lion, up from $493.2 mil­lion the pre­vi­ous year.

This mas­sive in­crease is al­most en­tire­ly at­trib­uted to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, where rental pay­ments bal­looned from ap­prox­i­mate­ly $9.5 mil­lion to near­ly $249 mil­lion in just 12 months.

The most com­plex rev­e­la­tion in­volves the Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front.

On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2025, a 30-year sub­lease was ex­e­cut­ed be­tween Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front De­vel­op­ment Ltd (POSWDL) and the Pres­i­dent, pro­vid­ing for fixed se­mi-an­nu­al rental pay­ments by the Gov­ern­ment.

This agree­ment served as the cor­ner­stone of a com­plex $5.4 bil­lion fi­nan­cial arrange­ment that has drawn sharp scruti­ny in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s 2025 Re­port on the pub­lic ac­counts.

While the arrange­ment is not of­fi­cial­ly clas­si­fied as gov­ern­ment debt, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al warned that it cre­ates a mas­sive in­di­rect oblig­a­tion for the State, po­ten­tial­ly ob­scur­ing the true lev­el of pub­lic li­a­bil­i­ties.

It stat­ed POSWDL sub­se­quent­ly used this sub­lease to se­cure a US$500 mil­lion (TT$3.37 bil­lion) fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment with US-based bank, UMB Bank NA Kansas City, Mis­souri, through se­cured notes due 2040.

While the gov­ern­ment has not clas­si­fied this as “of­fi­cial debt,” the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al point­ed out that the loan is be­ing re­paid en­tire­ly with pub­lic funds through se­mi-an­nu­al rent pay­ments to­talling over TT$5.4 bil­lion over the life of the lease.