Fac­ing a tight for­eign ex­change mar­ket, PriceS­mart’s Trinidad busi­ness­es have turned to the Ja­maican cap­i­tal mar­kets and Trinida­di­an banks to source up to US$65 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of its dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre and set­tle­ment of its out­stand­ing payables.

The in­for­ma­tion was re­vealed in PriceS­mart Inc’s third quar­ter re­port for the pe­ri­od end­ing May 31. PSMT Trinidad/To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (PSMT TT) has tapped GK Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Ltd in Ja­maica to arrange a US$16 mil­lion bond which will be is­sued in Ja­maican dol­lars and in­dexed to Unit­ed States dol­lars (USD). PSMT TT could po­ten­tial­ly place an ad­di­tion­al US$13.5 mil­lion equiv­a­lent of this bond which will bear a 7.25 per cent in­ter­est rate and a four-year tenure.

PSMT TT will pledge a TTD equiv­a­lent of 1.05 times the prin­ci­pal amount (US$16.80 mil­lion) in a mon­ey mar­ket mu­tu­al fund at the Trinidad & To­ba­go Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion or an en­ti­ty ap­proved by the lenders. PSMT TT will al­lo­cate a min­i­mum of US$1.875 mil­lion to a sink­ing fund, to be main­tained with GK Cap­i­tal. The debt fa­cil­i­ty will be backed by a cor­po­rate guar­an­tee from af­fil­i­ate com­pa­ny PriceS­mart Ja­maica Ltd.