Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not dis­re­gard the “Chi­na fac­tor.” That was the ad­vice from Wen­dell Mot­t­ley, a for­mer Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, who al­so warned that Chi­nese loans can be­come “an al­ba­tross around our necks as they have be­come in some parts of Africa, but that’s not the Chi­nese’ fault.”

Mot­t­ley fo­cused on grow­ing Chi­nese in­vest­ment in the re­gion in his con­tri­bu­tion to a sem­i­nar on Growth and In­ter­na­tion­al Part­ner­ships host­ed by Am­ChamTT at the Roy­al Ho­tel, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day,

Not­ing that Chi­na’s ef­fort to gain in­flu­ence in the re­gion has caused the Unit­ed States to re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly, Mot­t­ley said T&T will have to be very so­phis­ti­cat­ed as it ma­noeu­vres part­ner­ships with the two coun­tries.

He asked: “As a coun­try, are we tak­ing loans or wel­com­ing in­vest­ments?”

Mot­t­ley said it would be bet­ter to ob­tain in­vest­ments “where the Chi­nese took some of the com­mer­cial risks.”

He re­called that when he fa­cil­i­tat­ed US$750 mil­lion in loans for Petrotrin to up­grade its diesel op­er­a­tions, he was told: “Petrotrin has an aw­ful his­to­ry of man­ag­ing their cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­tures.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mot­t­ley, out­side of the $2.6 bil­lion Chi­na has in­vest­ed in T&T, the Chi­nese In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion bought ten per cent of At­lantic LNG Train 1 for US 800 mil­lion. That fa­cil­i­ty is worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$40 bil­lion, he point­ed out.

He said Chi­na is shift­ing away from coal to in­vest in so­lar and wind tech­nolo­gies but in the in­ter­im, they will be us­ing LNG. While they are in­creas­ing­ly look­ing to sources near to them, they are al­so in­creas­ing­ly look­ing at prospects in this part of the world.

“That in­vest­ment is not on­ly fi­nan­cial it is strate­gic,” he said of the LNG deal.

“Whether we like it or not, we find our­selves as a key strate­gic play­er in a big play that is of glob­al sig­nif­i­cance and they will re­quire to bring to all of this a de­gree of so­phis­ti­ca­tion and hu­man in­ge­nu­ity and hard work.

“We are to make use of the op­por­tu­ni­ties and not just frit­ter them away and find our­selves used for oth­er peo­ple’s pur­pos­es which are le­git­i­mate and not be bright enough to serve our own,” Mot­t­ley urged.

The role and in­flu­ence of Chi­na and its role in T&T were in fo­cus in many pre­sen­ta­tions at the sem­i­nar.

Am­Cham TT CEO Ni­rad Tewarie said a key ob­jec­tive of the ses­sion was to look at “de­vel­op­ments in the last few months and the prospects for growth com­ing out of the changes and through links with oth­er coun­tries.”

“The on­ly way we are go­ing to re­turn to growth is if we are able to at­tract in­vest­ment, uti­lize gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture in a pro­duc­tive man­ner and de­vel­op the in­sti­tu­tions and the sys­tem that would al­low for the ef­fi­cient use of re­sources in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor,” he said.