Raphael John-Lall

Gov­ern­ment can­not re­veal de­tails of the deal with the Ja­maican-owned San­dals ho­tel chain be­cause that is not how in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness deals are done, ac­cord­ing to Stu­art Young, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

He had a mes­sage for for­mer Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) Pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond and oth­ers who be­lieve Gov­ern­ment is be­ing se­cre­tive about the deal:  “If we are a se­ri­ous coun­try and we are go­ing to at­tract so­phis­ti­cat­ed in­vestors to Trinidad and To­ba­go in tourism and oth­er com­pet­i­tive ar­eas, there is some­thing called con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. Oth­er com­peti­tors in oil and gas . . . you do not dis­close what are the gas agree­ments that you have en­tered in­to and San­dals is in a no dif­fer­ent po­si­tion.”

In an in­ter­view with Judy Kan­hai on CNC3’s Busi­ness Watch on Wednes­day night, Young said there is a big dif­fer­ence be­tween the To­ba­go deal and arrange­ments for oth­er San­dals’ ho­tels in the Caribbean.

“As we have said be­fore, the San­dals Beach Re­sort trans­ac­tion that we are hop­ing will take place in To­ba­go is very and marked­ly dif­fer­ent from what has hap­pened through­out the rest of the Caribbean,” he said.

“What we are look­ing at en­ter­ing in­to—and we are still in dis­cus­sions—is a man­age­ment con­tract uti­liz­ing the brand. All those oth­er deals what have hap­pened in Bar­ba­dos and Grena­da are deals where San­dals owns and op­er­ates the plant and the prof­itabil­i­ty goes to San­dals. In To­ba­go, we are go­ing to build and own the plant and they are go­ing to man­age it for us.”

Ray­mond has gone to the court to try to get Gov­ern­ment to re­lease de­tails of the San­dals mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU). Hear­ing of that mat­ter is set for No­vem­ber 29.

In an in­ter­view, Ray­mond asked: “There is no guar­an­tee I will get it as I have sued to get it. Why doesn’t San­dals or the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter re­lease it?”

In re­sponse, Young said: “San­dals is an in­ter­na­tion­al brand which com­petes in the tourism mar­ket and they have told us in writ­ing that if we were to re­lease the MOU it would put them at a se­ri­ous dis­ad­van­tage.”

Young said “at the right time” the de­tails of the deal will be made pub­lic.