PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) – The Trinidad and Tobago government says it intends to sell its 49 per cent shareholding in the Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) and will use the funds to ease the financial difficulties expected over the next few years

Finance Minister Colm Imbert, delivering the TT$59.7 billion (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) national budget to Parliament on Monday, said that the regional insurance company is considered to be a “strategic importance to the government.

“Its divestment will earn several billion dollars in revenue for the government to see us through the financial difficulties of the next few years,” Imbert said, telling legislators that the government had not been fully repaid for the bail out to CLICO.

“I have noticed a false narrative circulating that the government has been repaid all that it is due for the 2009, 2010 CLICO bailout. This is entirely untrue “.

Imbert said that the CLICO bail involved not only the insurance company but also involved the bail out of CL Financial (the parent company) and its subsidiaries, including CLICO Investment Bank and British American Insurance (BAICO), Republic Bank among others.

“Far from being fully repaid, the government is still owed over at least a further TT$13 billion. I want to make it clear, we are still owed TT$13 billion,” Imbert said.

In 2017, the government been granted permission to appoint provisional liquidators to preserve the assets of CL Financial as it sought to recover a TT$15 billion debt left from the 2009 bailout of the conglomerate’s insurance subsidiaries CLICO and BAICO.

In September 2020, Imbert said then that after a decade and multiple assessments, that the government’s bailout of CL Financial and CLICO had cost taxpayers TT$30 billion.

Imbert indicated that it was originally thought that the debt would be approximatelTT$15 billion, but that when the Ministry of Finance went to court with the liquidation “it was TT$23 billion plus and having done, the final account it is $30 billion.