Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance with responsibility for management of the Economic Division, Suzette Lee Chee, says State enterprises are owing Government close to $44 billion in outstanding loans.
She made the disclosure as she appeared before a Joint Select Committee for state enterprises at the International Waterfront Centre, Port-of-Spain, yesterday. The committee is chaired by Independent Senator David Small.
Lee Chee was responding to a question from JSC member Fazal Karim.
In giving a breakdown of the types of loans, Lee Chee said $25 billion was non-guaranteed and $19 billion was guaranteed. She said none of the State enterprises were in arrears nor defaulting on their loans. She indicated, however, that the Finance Ministry was working with the institutions and enterprises to reschedule payments.
Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Lisa Phillips, told the JSC the non-guarantee debts were being serviced “and at this time we do not have an issue in terms of the servicing of these debts.”
Small said the almost $25 billion non-guarantee loans were “a huge debt. It is all debt.” He said there was no issue with the $19 billion debt but the almost 25 billion was a matter of concern.
He said enterprises were “leaning to refinancing.” He noted that one of the companies which was repaying a non-guaranteed debt was Petrotrin. Noting the existing state of the national oil company, Small wanted to know what strategies were being implemented “to help Government entities manage the non-guaranteed debts. If entities start to fall off the rails, what is the plan?”
Small noted that Petrotrin was having issues with the current oil prices and the ability to generate revenue to sustain its operations
Phillips, in response, said: “Every month we receive a status report with respect to the non-guarantee debts. So we’ll be alerted early o’clock whether there are any problems (and) thus far we have had no problems with servicing the non-guaranteed debts.”
Phillips added: “We are working assiduously on refinancing if possible that (Petrotrin) debt.”
She insisted that the non-guaranteed loan repayments were “under control.”
