What is the truth behind NGC’s profits?

In the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) had re­port­ed unau­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $3.285 bil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025, which she said was dou­ble the com­pa­ny’s prof­it in 2024 and the high­est prof­it in 11 years.

She said the prof­itabil­i­ty of NGC in 2025 con­trasts with the com­pa­ny’s loss­es of $2.1 bil­lion in 2020 and $1.3 bil­lion in 2023 un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, led by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

With­out a doubt, it is good news that NGC had a prof­itable year in 2025. But even while prais­ing the mo­nop­oly nat­ur­al gas ag­gre­ga­tor, dis­trib­u­tor, and mer­chant and the Gov­ern­ment for the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance last year, cer­tain ques­tions arise that de­mand ur­gent an­swers and ex­pla­na­tions:

1) Where is NGC’s 2024 an­nu­al re­port or its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025?

Checks on the NGC web­site Wednes­day re­vealed that the com­pa­ny’s last an­nu­al re­port was for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023. NGC’s last (unau­dit­ed) sum­ma­ry con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments were for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

So, the com­pa­ny that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed six days ago as “one of T&T’s most im­por­tant state en­ter­pris­es and the foun­da­tion of T&T’s eco­nom­ic sur­vival and de­vel­op­ment,” is more than a year late in pro­duc­ing its au­dit­ed 2024 fi­nan­cials?

Why is that?

Did the pre­vi­ous chair­man of NGC, Dr Joseph Ish­mael Khan, and the board he led have a fun­da­men­tal dis­agree­ment with its au­di­tors Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers, that caused the com­pa­ny to fail to pro­duce its 2024 au­dit?

Who al­lowed the Prime Min­is­ter to stand up in Par­lia­ment and de­clare that she was mak­ing the an­nounce­ment of NGC’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cials for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025, with “a great sense of pride and a sense of ac­com­plish­ment” with no pub­lished au­dit of the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance in 2024?

How does Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar—or rather her speech writ­ers and ad­vi­sors—know for sure that NGC’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cials for 2025 were the best in 11 years, if they do not have the au­dit­ed 2024 re­sults as com­par­i­son?

And when will NGC pro­duce its au­dit­ed re­sults for 2025? Some­time next year?

And shouldn’t tri­umphant boast­ing about a com­pa­ny’s prof­its be based on au­dit­ed rather than unau­dit­ed re­sults.

2) An au­dit can change a prof­itable year to a loss-mak­ing one.

As the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed last Fri­day, NGC’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023, showed a loss of $1.3 bil­lion. That was be­cause the au­di­tors re­quired the com­pa­ny to take a good­will (im­pair­ment) charge of $1.5 bil­lion and a $328 mil­lion share of loss from an as­so­ciate com­pa­ny. Those $1.83 bil­lion in charges re­duced the com­pa­ny’s prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion to $24.2 mil­lion. And it was tax­a­tion of $1.32 bil­lion that pushed NGC to the $1.30 bil­lion loss for 2023.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, NGC’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cials for the pe­ri­od end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, record­ed a prof­it of $1.01 bil­lion com­pared to the full-year loss of $1.30 bil­lion. That is be­cause the then di­rec­tors of NGC pub­lished unau­dit­ed ac­counts for the first nine months of 2023, with­out ac­count­ing for the good­will charge or ful­ly for the share of the loss from as­so­ciate.

Will au­di­tors play a sim­i­lar waltz with the cur­rent di­rec­tors of NGC, in­sist­ing that all of the rel­e­vant fac­tors are tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in com­ing up with a good­will charge for 2025?

NGC’s good­will charges for the last 10-plus years were most­ly re­lat­ed to the com­pa­ny’s ac­qui­si­tion of a 39 per cent stake in Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd from the US en­er­gy gi­ant, Cono­co Phillips in Au­gust 2013, mak­ing PPG­PL a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of NGC.

From my un­der­stand­ing, NGC’s 2023 im­pair­ment charge of $1.5 bil­lion was ba­si­cal­ly due to the au­di­tors opin­ing that PPG­PL was worth $1.5 bil­lion less than the US$600 mil­lion ($3.9 bil­lion) NGC paid for it, due to the re­duced vol­ume and qual­i­ty of nat­ur­al gas and the com­pa­ny’s prospects go­ing for­ward, among oth­er fac­tors.

3) Did the Prime Min­is­ter’s pre­sen­ta­tion ig­nore NGC’s im­pair­ment charges?

Or, more to the point, are the NGC board and the Gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ing to con­vince NGC’s cur­rent au­di­tors that the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture has bright­ened so much—as a re­sult of the OFAC li­cences grant­ed to bpTT and Shell and the de­vel­op­ments with T&T’s cross-bor­der and near-bor­der gas fields—that a write-up rather than an im­pair­ment would be called for?

4) Why did the Prime Min­is­ter and not NGC’s line min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, de­liv­er the state­ment last Fri­day?

Trou­bling state­ment

In the pre­sen­ta­tion, the T&T Prime Min­is­ter said, “What they could not have done in 10 years, we have done in 10 months. Let us pause for a mo­ment, Mis­ter Speak­er, and re­flect on what this means. That $3.285 bil­lion is not just a num­ber. This is a clear demon­stra­tion of the enor­mous po­ten­tial of Trinidad and To­ba­go when our na­tion­al as­sets are prop­er­ly man­aged, strate­gi­cal­ly guid­ed, and al­lowed to op­er­ate with a trans­for­ma­tion­al vi­sion. NGC plays a cen­tral role in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. It is crit­i­cal to gov­ern­ment rev­enues, for­eign ex­change earn­ings, down­stream in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment, job cre­ation and over­all eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. When the NGC per­forms well, Trinidad and To­ba­go per­forms very well.”

The state­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is trou­bling for two more rea­sons:

5) Nowhere in her near­ly nine-minute state­ment did Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar take the time to help the view­ers, lis­ten­ers and read­ers of her com­ments un­der­stand why NGC de­clared its best prof­its in 11 years in 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Prime Min­is­ter, the NGC, un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), is “prop­er­ly man­aged, strate­gi­cal­ly guid­ed and al­lowed to op­er­ate with trans­for­ma­tion­al vi­sion.”

But her ad­vis­ers and speech writ­ers did not ex­plain what spe­cif­ic poli­cies were in­tro­duced by the NGC board and man­age­ment ap­point­ed by the UNC that re­sult­ed in the best fi­nan­cials in more than decade.

—What specif­i­cal­ly did the UNC board and man­age­ment do in eight months (May to De­cem­ber 2025) that pre­vi­ous boards and man­age­ments, ap­point­ed by the PNM, failed to do from Sep­tem­ber 2015 to April 2025?

The NGC board, or the Prime Min­is­ter her­self, needs to tell the pop­u­la­tion.

—What strate­gic guid­ance did the UNC-ap­point­ed board pro­vide to the NGC man­age­ment that turned around the for­tunes of the mo­nop­oly sup­pli­er of nat­ur­al gas in T&T?

I think the de­ci­sion by the TTNGL board to re­duce the com­pa­ny’s shares cap­i­tal by $2.2 bil­lion is com­mend­able, as that al­lows its di­rec­tors to re­sume the pay­ment of div­i­dends to share­hold­ers of the com­pa­ny. But how much has that de­ci­sion con­tributed to NGC’s unau­dit­ed $3.285 bil­lion prof­it in 2025?

6) The speech should have pre­sent­ed a more bal­anced and holis­tic over­sight of NGC’s fi­nan­cial health.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s analy­sis of NGC’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cials should have ex­plored some of the rea­sons for the loss­es de­clared in 2023.

For ex­am­ple, the for­mer chair­man of NGC, Dr Joseph Ish­mael Khan, ex­plained the com­pa­ny’s 2023 af­ter-tax loss of $1.3 bil­lion in 2023 by say­ing, “This out­come re­flects the im­pact of a sharp re­duc­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices, and a one-time non-cash im­pair­ment charge of $1.5 bil­lion for good­will and a write-down of in­vest­ment in as­so­ci­at­ed en­ti­ty of$0.3 bil­lion.

“The av­er­age price of am­mo­nia de­creased by 58.9 per cent, and methanol prices fell by 19 per cent com­pared to 2022, sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ing rev­enues, which saw a $14.3 bil­lion de­crease, rep­re­sent­ing a 42 per cent year-over-year de­cline.

“Con­se­quent­ly, gross prof­it for 2023 was $2.4 bil­lion, a TT$4 bil­lion de­crease from 2022.”

What role will in­ter­na­tion­al petro­chem­i­cal prices play in NGC’s even­tu­al au­dit?