From Caribbean360

Finance Minister Larry Howai told the Senate that the TT$20.8 billion spent were necessary to deal with the fall-out from the CL Financial crash.

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – The Trinidad and Tobago government said Wednesday it had spent in excess of TT$20 billion (One TT dollar = US$0.16 cents) in settling the finances of the embattled CL Financial group that led to the near collapse of the regional insurance giant, Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO), four years ago.

Finance Minister Larry Howai told the Senate that the TT$20.8 billion spent were necessary to deal with the fall-out from the CL Financial crash.

“To preserve the stability of the economy and to ensure that these funds are repaid, the government has begun the process of putting arrangements in place and so that to the extent that the financial subsidiaries are unable to do so certain assets will be disposed off”.

He told legislators that the government is now in discussions with CL Financial “as to the manner in which the funds expended by the government would be repaid”.

Howai said that the government was now trying to resolve all the issues surrounding CL Financial very soon, but when pressed by opposition legislator Camille Robinson Regis, noted the settlement could be reached by the end of July.

He said the state is expected to recover a significant amount of the money already spent.

“We expect that we will be able to recover  all of the funding. Not all of it we expect to recover immediately. We expect that some part of it and depending on what happens with some of these contingent and further liabilities…we could at this stage, our preliminary estimate and I want to say this is only preliminary, is that there is approximately three and  half billion which have to be turned out over a period of time.

Howai said that some of assets of the CL Financial would be disposed off when all processes are completed.

Earlier this year, CLICO announced that it had made an after-tax profit of nearly TT$3.8 billion in 2012.

CLICO’s audited financial results for 2012 were published on its Web site, indicating that the 2012 after tax figure was more than five times greater than the TT$702 million it declared in 2011.

CLICO declared profits of TT$6.2 billion from its investing activities for the financial year, which eclipsed the TT$2.2 billion loss from insurance activities.

CLICO and its sister company, the British American Insurance Company (BAICO) collapsed in 2009 and the Trinidad and Tobago government signed a shareholders’ agreement with then CLICO chairman Lawrence Duprey following the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between them on January 30, 2009. The MOU gave the government control of 49 per cent of CLICO’s shares

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/business/1107412.html?utm_source=Caribbean360+Newsletters&utm_campaign=647de8d9de-Vol_7_Issue_013_Business4_3_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_350247989a-647de8d9de-39393477#ixzz2xwbJcHrg