Capital Markets

Conditions in T&T’s capital markets continue to be shaped by the central bank’s tightening of monetary policy. In line with the expectations of the financial sector, the central bank moved ahead with a fifth consecutive increase in its repo rate of 25 basis points to 4% in late May 2015. The increases have begun to have an impact on domestic money market rates, or commercial banks’ prime lending rate, which rose to 8% in May 2015, up from around 7.5% before the repo rate hikes. Activity in the primary and secondary markets was moderate in the first nine months of 2014, with four issuers raising $639.93m through six separate securities in the primary market. In the secondary market, government bonds with a total value of $140.2m were traded. With the exception of government bonds with short to medium tenors, yields generally moved in an upwards direction.