Finance Minister Colm Imbert yesterday said he would speak with the senior official at the Ministry of Finance appointed to liaise with Republic Bank Ltd, the trustees of the ArcelorMittal Point Lisas pension fund, to determine the true facts of the state of the fund. This comes one day after the Steel Workers’ Union of T&T (SWUTT) said the pension plan was jeopardy.
Imbert had announced at a March 21 press conference that a senior ministry official was instructed to get the facts on the adequacy of the company’s pension plan. But yesterday, Imbert said he had still not received information from the official. “The senior official has not yet reported back to me. I would speak with him tomorrow (today),” Imbert said in a telephone interview
Meanwhile, ArcelorMittal, via a press release from Lisa-Ann Joseph, yesterday denied certain reports in a Sunday Guardian article about the pension plan. In the release, ArcelorMittal said it complied with the recommendations made by the actuary, Bacon Woodrow & de Souza Limited, in its 2012 report.
The company said this compliance was to pay contributions at six per cent up to September 30, 2015 and then 23.7 per cent for the period October 2015 to March 2016. However, the actuaries advised that because the economy was small and developing, it meant that the outlook for key economic factors such as inflation was uncertain. The actuaries said both the plan’s financial position and the company’s contribution rate in the future were volatile. The company was therefore advised to increase its contribution for employees to 12 per cent before October last year.
The actuaries also advised that if the plan’s experience followed the assumptions in the valuation, the company could continue to contribute at the 12 per cent until August 31, 2016. However, yesterday’s press release did not address this. ArcelorMittal issued termination letters to 644 workers on March 11.
The Sunday Guardian, in an email on Saturday night, also directed questions to Joseph about a $9 million payment made in February towards the plan. She did not address this. Yesterday, the union said it was convinced the company had defaulted in its pension payments and called on the relevant parties “to come clean.”
The 2014 financial statements for the pension plan showed that the surplus of revenue over expenditure for 2013 was $$64.791,005, the union claimed. The fund at the beginning of that year was $799,588,165. The surplus of revenue over expenditure for 2014 was $1,920,962—a drastic drop by about $62 million. The fund as at 2014 was $864,379,170.
T&T Guardian received a copy of the financial statements. SWUTT second vice president Ramkumar Narinesingh said, “It seems that the company’s failure to follow the actuaries’ suggestion in the 2012 report to increase from the six per cent to the 12 per cent, resulted in the surplus diminishing.”
Yesterday’s press release from the company spoke to the 2012 surplus which was then $53.6 million. The 2015 financial statements are outstanding. The union also maintained yesterday that at last Thursday’s meeting with the actuaries and trustees, it was not told of any decision regarding closure and terminated workers.
Yesterday, however, the company said, “Both trustee and the actuary were informed of the current status of the company and termination of all employees, having had both telephonic conversations and a meeting with the company as early as on March 14, 2016.”