Finance Minister Tancoo in US for bond show

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is cur­rent­ly in New York this week for a bond show, as the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to bor­row up to US$1 bil­lion on the in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­ket.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed him last night on the over­seas mis­sion, Tan­coo said, “It is a work in progress and will is­sue a brief when com­plet­ed.”

In a le­gal no­tice is­sued on Jan­u­ary 12, Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment had ap­point­ed JP Mor­gan Se­cu­ri­ties LLC and Bank of Amer­i­ca Se­cu­ri­ties Inc as joint lead man­agers and arrangers for the is­suance.

The le­gal no­tice said the bonds would be is­sued un­der the Ex­ter­nal Loans Act, which al­lows for monies to be raised ex­ter­nal­ly for gen­er­al de­vel­op­ment projects and to re­pay pre­vi­ous loans. It will be raised through the in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­ket, where gov­ern­ments is­sue bonds or notes to large glob­al in­vestors.

Un­der the Ex­ter­nal Loans (Tax and Ex­change Con­trol Ex­emp­tion) Or­der, 2026, signed on Mon­day by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Tan­coo, all pay­ments re­lat­ed to the notes, in­clud­ing prin­ci­pal, in­ter­est, and oth­er debt charges, will be ex­empt from tax­es and ex­change con­trol re­quire­ments.

The notes will be of­fered to qual­i­fied in­sti­tu­tion­al buy­ers in the Unit­ed States, in ac­cor­dance with Rule 144A of the US Se­cu­ri­ties Act, as well as to in­vestors out­side the US un­der reg­u­la­tions.

In a re­port in which it moved its out­look of T&T from sta­ble to neg­a­tive last Sep­tem­ber, the S&P Glob­al Rat­ings agency said, “The gov­ern­ment will have el­e­vat­ed fi­nanc­ing needs in 2026 as it faces an amor­tis­ing US$1 bil­lion bond due in sum­mer.”