The Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GORTT) has ap­point­ed JP Mor­gan Se­cu­ri­ties and Bank of Amer­i­ca Se­cu­ri­ties to arrange a US$1 bil­lion in­ter­na­tion­al bond is­sue. The trans­ac­tion, au­tho­rised by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance un­der the Ex­ter­nal Loans Act on Jan­u­ary 12, 2026, tar­gets qual­i­fied in­sti­tu­tion­al buy­ers in the Unit­ed States un­der Rule 144A and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors un­der Reg­u­la­tion S.

All of this was an­nounced over the past week. We should note that there is a US$1 bil­lion bond com­ing due in Au­gust 2026. While not ex­plic­it­ly part of the an­nounce­ments, it seems straight­for­ward that the cur­rent en­gage­ment is to re­fi­nance the bond due in eight months time.

From all ac­counts, this bond is what is re­ferred to as a “bul­let at ma­tu­ri­ty” which means on­ly in­ter­est is paid over the ten years that the bond was in is­sue (from 2016) and the prin­ci­pal is due in Au­gust 2026. The GORTT ei­ther needs to re­fi­nance or draw down on the stock of US dol­lar re­serves at the Cen­tral Bank or in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund. Re­fi­nanc­ing is the more prac­ti­cal op­tion.