NGC used as piggy bank, says Young

“[The Opposition] emptied the coffers of NGC in a most undignified manner,” Young said yesterday in his contribution to the Budget debate in Parliament. The NGC board, Young said, “went backwards” when declaring the State gas company’s dividends from 2011 to 2015, claiming “retroactive dividends” from 2009 along with its 2011 dividend payment. so along with $550 million in dividends for 2011, the company claimed an additional $915 million from 2009.

In 2010, the company declared a dividend of $1.24 billion, again with $185 million from 2009. “That was a very unusual way of declaring dividends … they were taking dividends and declaring them again.

“Over time they took $10 billion of the NGC’s retained earnings in cash,” Young said. NGC, as a wholly owned state enterprise, contributes to the Government (its only shareholder) through dividends as determined by its profits. Last year, US investment firm Oppenheimer had called a $4.2 billion dividend from the NGC “ad hoc,” whose purpose was to reduce the country’s deficit. Then Finance Minister Larry Howai had dismissed that report as “nonsensical.”