Apr 2007 Financial News

T&T gets top credit rating

Apr 05, 2007

TRINIDAD AND Tobago has been assigned the highest credit worthiness rating by the Caribbean Information and Credit Rating Services (CariCRIS), Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Conrad Enill, disclosed yesterday.

This country has been assigned AAA on both its Foreign Currency and Local Currency Ratings, based on CariCRIS' regional and national rating scales respectively, he said.

Enill boasted that these latest results follow other favourable ratings from international agencies Standard and Poor's and Moody's.

"According to Cari-CRIS, the ratings on the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago reflect its superior external liquidity, sharply reduced net public debt and increased fiscal flexibility, resulting from a robust macroeconomic performance for just over a decade," Enill said.

Meanwhile, Enill who spoke at a press conference at his Port of Spain offices yesterday, said Government had negotiated with a number of Caribbean and South American countries "government to government", for the importation of food in bulk, based on favourable landed costs. This was being done as a supplement to the development of agriculture lots on Caroni lands and agriculture policy agreements with Cubans, which should come on stream in two to eight months.


Source:
Roxanne Stapleton
The Trinidad Express
Thursday, April 5th 2007

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_business?id=161125588