Petrotrin refers to the Sun­day Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al en­ti­tled "Re­think­ing Petrotrin's role" of Au­gust 29.

In the said ed­i­to­r­i­al, a num­ber of opin­ions have been prof­fered. While the com­pa­ny does not wish to treat with all of them at this time, it nonethe­less be­lieves that er­ro­neous state­ments made of its re­liance on the na­tion­al Trea­sury should be cor­rect­ed. In this re­gard, the com­pa­ny wish­es to ad­vise as fol­lows: Since its in­cep­tion in 1993, the com­pa­ny has al­ways been a con­trib­u­tor to the na­tion­al Trea­sury.

Over the years, the com­pa­ny has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant amounts to the na­tion­al cof­fers, peak­ing at $6.5 bil­lion in 2008. The Gov­ern­ment sourced fund­ing on be­half of Petrotrin for the first re­fin­ery up­grade in the ear­ly 1990s and these funds were on-lent to Petrotrin at pre­vail­ing in­ter­est rates, plus an on-lend­ing fee of three per cent. These loans were ful­ly re­paid by Petrotrin with­out any sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment, and with full pay­ment of the Gov­ern­ment's on-lend­ing fee.

Since then, oth­er loans have been ne­go­ti­at­ed with­out the di­rect in­volve­ment of the Gov­ern­ment and Petrotrin con­tin­ues to meet its com­mit­ments to all its cred­i­tors. The cur­rent up­grade at the re­fin­ery is in­tend­ed to meet in­ter­na­tion­al spec­i­fi­ca­tions for its prod­ucts and to im­prove the com­pa­ny's prof­itabil­i­ty. This was nec­es­sary for Petrotrin to not on­ly re­tain but al­so to grow its cus­tomer base. Petrotrin through its pro­cure­ment of goods and ser­vices from con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to in­di­rect em­ploy­ment in both small and large lo­cal busi­ness­es.

Petrotrin is al­so a key con­trib­u­tor and sup­port­er of na­tion­al so­cial pro­grammes in the ar­eas of ed­u­ca­tion, sport, cul­ture, com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and oth­er hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­forts.

Gillian Fri­day

Man­ag­er cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions

Petrotrin