An­tho­ny Wil­son

It is now well known that a com­pa­ny with Malaysian di­rec­tors called CH Hold­ings re­ceived a con­tract to con­struct the Le­gal Af­fairs tow­er, a build­ing of some 350,000 square feet, in down­town Port-of-Spain in 2005. Malaysian birth and mar­riage cer­tifi­cates un­earthed by the Con­gress of the Peo­ple and made pub­lic last week ap­pear to make a con­nec­tion be­tween the two di­rec­tors of CH De­vel­op­ment and the wife of Calder Hart, the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Ude­cott, who re­signed on Sat­ur­day. Ude­cott, of course, is the com­pa­ny that signed the con­tract with CH De­vel­op­ment/ Sun­way, even though two com­pa­nies ten­dered bids that were sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than the bid sub­mit­ted by CH De­vel­op­ment. In fact, CH De­vel­op­ment/ Sun­way sub­mit­ted a bid that was $67 mil­lion high­er than the low bid.

What may not be so well re­mem­bered, al­though it was pub­lished in the Guardian, is that a team com­pris­ing Calder Hart, Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T pres­i­dent Ken Julien and peren­ni­al act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Lenny Saith vis­it­ed Sun­way's head of­fice dur­ing a side trip to Malaysia some years be­fore the con­tract to con­struct the build­ing was signed. And what may al­so not be well re­mem­bered is that in Oc­to­ber 2007, Sun­way Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Ltd signed a five-year con­tract with Na­tion­al Quar­ries Co Ltd, a com­pa­ny which pro­duces quar­ry prod­ucts and is owned by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Un­der the agree­ment, Na­tion­al Quar­ries agreed to guar­an­tee the pur­chase of 5 mil­lion tonnes of ag­gre­gates from Sun­way Con­struc­tion. The quar­ry ma­te­r­i­al would have been ex­tract­ed from Scott's Quar­ry in East Trinidad and was des­tined for gov­ern­ment projects. The con­tract, which in ef­fect means 1 mil­lion tonnes a year for five years, was agreed to at a pre-de­ter­mined price that works out to be about $90 per met­ric tonne.

This agree­ment, which Gov­ern­ment back­bencher MP Kei­th Row­ley has re­ferred to as a take-or-pay con­tract, ef­fec­tive­ly means that a state-owned com­pa­ny has signed a con­tract worth at least $450 mil­lion over a five-year pe­ri­od ($90 per met­ric tonne mul­ti­plied by 5 mil­lion tonnes) in which the lo­cal com­pa­ny guar­an­teed that it will pur­chase a fixed amount at a fixed price. The con­tract be­tween Sun­way and Na­tion­al Quar­ries, in which there is an op­tion to re­new for an­oth­er five years, al­so stip­u­lates that Na­tion­al Quar­ries "will re­im­burse Sun­way Con­struc­tion for any price in­crease in diesel above the cur­rent price of US$0.21 ($1.30) per litre for use of diesel by any equip­ment utilised at the quar­ry," ac­cord­ing to a Sun­way news re­lease. The re­lease stat­ed that the quar­ry agree­ment was not ex­pect­ed to have an im­me­di­ate im­pact on Sun­way's earn­ings per share for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing June 30, 2008 but that it was "ex­pect­ed to con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to the fu­ture earn­ings of the Sun­way Group." The con­tract, there­fore, guar­an­tees that Na­tion­al Quar­ries will pur­chase 1 mil­lion tonnes of quar­ry ma­te­r­i­al a year from the Sun­way sub­sidiary for five years with­out re­gard to the de­mand for ag­gre­gate in T&T. The mar­ket for ag­gre­gate has soft­ened con­sid­er­ably in the last 18 months.

In de­fend­ing the con­tract short­ly af­ter the Guardian pub­lished a sto­ry on it, Na­tion­al Quar­ries chair­man Frank Look Kin said Sun­way was hired as the con­trac­tor for the state-owned com­pa­ny af­ter a com­pet­i­tive ten­der took place. Look Kin told the Guardian that four com­pa­nies re­spond­ed to the ad­ver­tise­ment and three com­pa­nies sub­mit­ted firm ten­der of­fers. Look Kin said the Sun­way bid, at about $90 per tonne, was some 35 per cent less than the best pro­pos­al put for­ward by the oth­er bid­ders. Asked why Na­tion­al Quar­ries was look­ing to sub-con­tract the ex­ploita­tion of Scott's quar­ry, Look Kin said the com­pa­ny was a "lit­tle bit lim­it­ed in terms of man­pow­er." He said the com­pa­ny did not have the ex­per­tise to con­duct pre­ci­sion blast­ing to ex­pose spe­cif­ic amounts of the lime­stone ma­te­r­i­al which is found at Scott's Quar­ry.

In Ju­ly, 2007, speak­ing at the top­ping up cer­e­mo­ny for the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs tow­er on Ed­ward St in Port-of-Spain, the same one that was con­struct­ed by Sun­way, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning spoke about a "very crit­i­cal ag­gre­gate sup­ply sit­u­a­tion" which would not be al­lowed to com­pro­mise the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment plans. Ac­cord­ing to Mr Man­ning: "There is a do­mes­tic car­tel that seems to be con­trol­ling the price of ag­gre­gate ma­te­r­i­al...We are not about to leave that where it is." In a speech made on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2008, dur­ing the bud­get de­bate for the 2009 bud­get, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning dis­closed that of­fi­cials of Sun­way had vis­it­ed him on four oc­ca­sions at his of­fice. The first oc­ca­sion was on May 10, 2007. The sec­ond was on Ju­ly 18, 2007 and was held with a Sun­way of­fi­cial named Foh-Kai Kwan. In re­lease is­sued af­ter the sec­ond meet­ing that he read out in Par­lia­ment, Mr Man­ning said: The Prime Min­is­ter ex­pressed con­cern that a car­tel ex­ists in the lo­cal con­struc­tion in­dus­try that had in­flu­ence over the costs and sup­ply of con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, the ex­is­tence or this Car­tel, he in­di­cat­ed, was not in the best in­ter­est of the con­tin­ued growth of the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

Sun­way was in­vit­ed to part­ner with the gov­ern­ment to bring eq­ui­ty back in­to the sec­tor and to as­sist in the en­hance­ment of the en­tire range of con­struc­tion re­lat­ed ser­vices and prod­ucts on of­fer in Trinidad and To­ba­go." In ad­di­tion, the re­lease stat­ed: "Mr Kwan al­so in­di­cat­ed to Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning that in ad­di­tion to its ex­per­tise in con­struc­tion, Sun­way's core com­pe­tence was in quar­ry­ing, mak­ing it the largest quar­ry­ing firm in the world. He in­di­cat­ed Sun­way's will­ing­ness to col­lab­o­rate with the gov­ern­ment to meet the na­tion­al de­mand for an im­proved high­way net­work and to in­crease the na­tion's ho­tel stock. The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that he was aware of Sun­way's ex­per­tise in all three ar­eas. In ad­di­tion Sun­way is cur­rent­ly in talks with the gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a con­struc­tion school in Trinidad and To­ba­go to en­sure that in the fu­ture, lo­cal con­struc­tion prac­ti­tion­ers are equipped with skills that are in de­mand in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Not much has been heard since about the es­tab­lish­ment of a con­struc­tion school by Sun­way.

The third meet­ing be­tween Mr Man­ning and Sun­way of­fi­cials, one as­sumes,? was for the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 3 2007, be­tween Sun­way and the Gov­ern­ment "to record their mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing and com­mit­ment to en­ter in­to com­mer­cial dis­cus­sions with each oth­er in re­spect of cer­tain agreed ar­eas of col­lab­o­ra­tion pend­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of the rel­e­vant bind­ing agree­ments." Those com­mer­cial dis­cus­sions were to fo­cus on high­ways and ho­tels–ar­eas in which the Malaysian con­glom­er­ate is strong.

The fourth meet­ing with Sun­way took place on Ju­ly 17, 2008. At­tend­ing that meet­ing, were Foh-Kwai Kwan, who is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sun­way Con­struc­tion and Calder Hart, as is clear from the pho­to­graph on the web site of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. Apart from the Gov­ern­ment's de­sire to bring "eq­ui­ty" to the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor and en­cour­age for­eign in­vest­ment–which are both high­ly laud­able pur­suits, it must be said–one won­ders whether the Prime Min­is­ter met with se­nior of­fi­cials of any oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al con­struc­tion com­pa­ny on four oc­ca­sions in the space of 15 months?

Did Mr Man­ning meet on four oc­ca­sions in less than 15 months with the French com­pa­ny, Bouygues, which con­struct­ed the Wa­ter­front Plaza with lit­tle con­tro­ver­sy? Did he meet on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions in a short space of time with Shang­hai Con­struc­tion, which is build­ing that mag­nif­i­cent struc­ture in the Heights of Gua­napo for the Prime Min­is­ter's spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er? What did Sun­way have that those oth­er com­pa­nies, and oth­ers, did not?