Will this Government agree to privatisation?

Last week, in this space, I au­thored a com­men­tary head­lined ‘Is now the time for pri­vati­sa­tion?’ with the pur­pose of gen­er­at­ing a dis­cus­sion on whether the lo­cal state en­ter­prise sec­tor is now too large and re­quires ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion in or­der to ad­dress the bur­den cer­tain com­pa­nies place on T&T’s fis­cal and its pub­lic debt po­si­tions.

It goes with­out say­ing that a prop­er­ly man­aged process of pri­vati­sa­tion—mean­ing one that starts af­ter ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tion, is well se­quenced, fol­lows the norms of prop­er dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty, up­holds trans­paren­cy and pays close at­ten­tion to con­flict of in­ter­est and cor­rup­tion is­sues etc—will re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue in­flows in­to the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund, gen­er­ate much need­ed for­eign ex­change, re­duce the coun­try’s for­eign and lo­cal debt and per­haps even en­sure that T&T’s peren­ni­al fis­cal deficits are con­fined to his­to­ry.

Be­fore T&T em­barks on a 2020s process of pri­vati­sa­tion, there are at least three cru­cial pre­req­ui­sites that the Gov­ern­ment needs to com­plete:

1) Em­bark on a process of de­ter­min­ing the val­ue of each state com­pa­ny;

2) De­cide which of the state com­pa­nies no longer serve the pur­pose that led to their es­tab­lish­ment; and

3) Con­sid­er and agree the method of dis­pos­al, mean­ing some state com­pa­nies need to be liq­ui­dat­ed, oth­ers can be sold en­tire­ly to lo­cal or for­eign in­ter­ests and some can be par­tial­ly di­vest­ed ei­ther to pri­vate sec­tor in­ter­ests or on to the lo­cal stock mar­ket.

A great deal of work on the state en­ter­prise sec­tor was com­plet­ed by the State En­ter­prise Re­view Com­mit­tee, as not­ed by Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, in his com­ment on this page.

Size of the sec­tor

One of the more re­cent ex­pla­na­tions of the ra­tio­nale be­hind T&T hav­ing such a large state sec­tor comes in the 2026 State En­ter­pris­es In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (SEIP), which is one of the bud­get doc­u­ments for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year.

The 2026 SEIP states, “State en­ter­pris­es are es­tab­lished for en­hanced ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness in the de­liv­ery of pub­lic goods and ser­vices. They are main­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed un­der the Com­pa­nies Act (as amend­ed), with the over­all ob­jec­tive of sup­port­ing Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy for the so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.” That is, in my view, an in­ad­e­quate ex­pla­na­tion for the growth of the state en­ter­prise sec­tor since 2020. (More on that lat­er)

The 2026 SEIP al­so out­lines, “The state en­ter­pris­es sec­tor com­pris­es 46 com­pa­nies of which 36 are whol­ly owned, six are ma­jor­i­ty owned and four in which the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GORTT) has a mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ing.”

Those four com­pa­nies are:

* Cli­co (49 per cent Gov­ern­ment, 51 per cent oth­er;

* De­vel­op­ment Fi­nance Ltd (49.7 per cent Gov­ern­ment, 50.25 per cent Mar­itime);

* T&T Mort­gage Bank, 49 per cent Gov­ern­ment, 51 per cent Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board) and;

* MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy Ltd, which is 46.7 per cent state-owned, 14.9 per cent DFL and 38.4 per cent oth­ers.

But the list of state com­pa­nies in the cur­rent SEIP does not on­ly com­prise en­ter­pris­es that are whol­ly owned, ma­jor­i­ty owned or mi­nor­i­ty owned. It al­so in­cludes 86 com­pa­nies that are de­scribed as be­ing in­di­rect­ly owned by the State. These are most­ly sub­sidiaries of whol­ly or ma­jor­i­ty-owned State com­pa­nies.

That bring the to­tal num­ber of com­pa­nies in which the State has an in­ter­est to 140.

Ques­tions:

1) Are all 86 of these in­di­rect­ly owned com­pa­nies ful­ly staffed with boards of di­rec­tors, em­ploy­ees and ex­ec­u­tives (such as com­pa­ny sec­re­taries)?

2) If the an­swer is yes, what is the to­tal cost of en­sur­ing that these 86 com­pa­nies meet their statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions?

3) And if all the 86 in­di­rect­ly owned com­pa­nies do have di­rec­tors and em­ploy­ees, what are they paid by their par­ent com­pa­nies?

And the list of 86 in­di­rect­ly state-owned com­pa­nies seems to ex­clude shares in the com­pa­nies owned by the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund (NIF), which is a com­pa­ny that is 100-per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole.

NIF owns:

* About 29.92 per cent of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd’s (RFHL) is­sued share cap­i­tal;

* Ex­act­ly 29.9 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd (AHL);

* A 5.4 per cent stake of West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny;

* Some 22.98 per cent of One Caribbean Me­dia; and

* One hun­dred per cent of Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU).

NIF’s block of shares in RFHL plus the 18.81 per cent share­hold­ing in the bank hold­ing com­pa­ny owned by the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board and 2.70 per cent held di­rect­ly by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole al­lowed the Gov­ern­ment to ap­point a ma­jor­i­ty of the di­rec­tors on the bank hold­ing com­pa­ny’s board, in­clud­ing the chair­man.

The fact that NIF owns 29.9 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd al­so al­lowed the Gov­ern­ment to ap­point all of the di­rec­tors to the board of the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny.

The sev­en state com­pa­nies, in which NEL (Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd) holds shares, are list­ed by the 2026 SEIB as be­ing in­di­rect­ly owned by the State, as NEL is 66.05 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole and 16.67 per cent by Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, which is 100 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole.

Ques­tions:

* Why are the NEL com­pa­nies part of the SEIP list, but not the NIF com­pa­nies?

* If the State is the largest sin­gle share­hold­er of both RFHL and An­gos­tu­ra, which al­lowed Cor­po­ra­tion Sole to ap­point a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors in the case of the bank and all of the di­rec­tors at An­gos­tu­ra, why are those two com­pa­nies not cat­e­gorised as be­ing in­di­rect­ly owned by the State in the SEIP list?

* Does con­trol of a com­pa­ny’s board count for any­thing?

Rea­son for lack of in­ter­est

It is note­wor­thy that nei­ther pri­vati­sa­tion nor di­vest­ment has been part of the lex­i­con of the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion since its elec­tion on April 28, 2025, al­though the ad­van­tages of both, as stat­ed above, are man­i­fest, .

I be­lieve the rea­son the Gov­ern­ment is not sup­port­ive of ei­ther con­cept is be­cause of the large num­ber of par­ty sup­port­ers and fi­nanciers it can ap­point to the boards of state com­pa­nies. These board ap­point­ments are re­wards for the boys (and a few women) for their sup­port for the par­ty in pow­er.

To close down or sell state com­pa­nies would re­duce the num­ber of di­rec­tors that the Gov­ern­ment can ap­point.

The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion (the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment) was on­ly mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter as it packed state boards with its sup­port­ers and ap­point­ed the State En­ter­prise Re­view Com­mit­tee be­fore large­ly ig­nor­ing its ad­vice. The word “large­ly” is used be­cause the 2024 SEIP lists 12 state com­pa­nies that had ei­ther ceased op­er­a­tions or were at var­i­ous stages of be­ing wound up.

And the 2024 SEIP states that the liq­ui­da­tion of an ad­di­tion­al six non-func­tion­al state com­pa­nies was com­plet­ed and the Min­istry of Fi­nance was await­ing dis­so­lu­tion cer­tifi­cates from the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry.

It is like­ly, but not cer­tain, that those ac­tions were based on the ad­vice from the com­mit­tee.

Fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion of state com­pa­nies

The 2026 SEIP states that T&T’s state en­ter­pris­es through their op­er­a­tions and cap­i­tal ex­pan­sion ac­tiv­i­ties, con­tribute to the econ­o­my of T&T through dis­tri­b­u­tion of div­i­dends to Cor­po­ra­tion Sole and oth­er share­hold­ers, pay­ment of tax­es, for­eign ex­change earn­ings and the pro­vi­sion of goods and ser­vices. These ac­tiv­i­ties are usu­al­ly fi­nanced sig­nif­i­cant­ly from re­tained earn­ings, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment.

“Dur­ing the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, the state en­ter­pris­es sec­tor dis­trib­uted div­i­dends to­talling $1.49 bil­lion, paid cor­po­ra­tion tax to­talling $3.24 bil­lion and gen­er­at­ed for­eign ex­change amount­ing to $33.37 bil­lion,” the SEIP states. That means state en­ter­pris­es con­tributed a to­tal of $4.73 bil­lion in div­i­dend and cor­po­ra­tion tax rev­enue to Cor­po­ra­tion Sole in the 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

T&T’s to­tal rev­enue and grants for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year was $47.84 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the 2025 Re­view of the Econ­o­my, re­sult­ing in the div­i­dends and cor­po­ra­tion tax­es of T&T’s state en­ter­pris­es con­tributed 9.9 per cent of the to­tal rev­enue of the coun­try in 2024. That is not in­signif­i­cant, but is that the main rea­son to keep a whole raft of state com­pa­nies?