Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Dis­ap­point­ed by the op­po­si­tion’s re­ac­tion to his vis­it to T&T, In­di­an in­dus­tri­al­ist and in­vestor Naveen Jin­dal will not bid for the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery. He re­vealed this in a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley Row­ley on Ju­ly 26. Row­ley read ex­cerpts of the let­ter Jin­dal sent him when he swore in the new ex­ec­u­tive of the PNM’s Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day.

Part of the let­ter from Jin­dal to Row­ley read: “It is with great dis­ap­point­ment, there­fore, that I must ad­dress the re­ac­tion led by the of­fi­cial op­po­si­tion par­ty fol­low­ing on our vis­it. The char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion I ex­pe­ri­enced mere­ly for con­sid­er­ing the in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty in the Guaracara Re­fin­ery was deeply dis­heart­en­ing and dis­cour­ag­ing. More­over, the un­just at­tacks di­rect­ed at our groups, com­pa­nies, en­ti­ties that op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly, and are un­con­nect­ed to le­gal mat­ters mis­char­ac­terised in the lo­cal press and Par­lia­ment set a trou­bling prece­dent for po­ten­tial in­vestors plan­ning to in­vest in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Jin­dal al­so raised con­cerns about the Op­po­si­tion, stat­ing: “From our or­gan­i­sa­tion’s point of view, these ac­tions by the pur­port­ed gov­ern­ment in wait­ing raise se­ri­ous con­cerns as they rep­re­sent an el­e­ment of risk and po­ten­tial in­sta­bil­i­ty that is in­com­pat­i­ble with pro­vid­ing a pre­dictable and se­cure in­vest­ment cli­mate.”

He said the de­vel­op­ments had “shak­en con­fi­dence” and his com­pa­nies had felt com­pelled to “re­assess the vi­a­bil­i­ty of pro­ceed­ing with a for­mal bid for the re­fin­ery at this time.”

Row­ley would lat­er la­bel as “San­dals all over again.”

Since Jin­dal’s vis­it on June 17, the UNC and the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) have tak­en aim at him. The UNC called for Jin­dal to be dis­qual­i­fied from the bid­ding process for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

In June, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts said it was un­eth­i­cal and un­fair for one of the bid­ders to meet with the Prime Min­is­ter while a ten­der was out. Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked if it was “the Venezue­lans” who put the Gov­ern­ment on to Jin­dal to get the re­fin­ery.

In his Labour Day ad­dress, the pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the OW­TU, An­cel Ro­get, said: “I want to say this af­ter­noon that the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union will not stand idly by and al­low any­body to walk in here and take over the re­fin­ery. So In­di­an busi­ness­man or not, who­ev­er you be, we must be a part of go­ing for­ward in the op­er­a­tion of that re­fin­ery.”

In the let­ter to Row­ley, Jin­dal who served as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment in his na­tive In­dia on three oc­ca­sions said: “I un­der­stand the vi­tal role con­struc­tive op­po­si­tion plays in a healthy democ­ra­cy, how­ev­er, in my re­spect­ful view the be­hav­iour ex­hib­it­ed by the Op­po­si­tion in this in­stance risks caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic and rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Such ac­tions will like­ly de­ter po­ten­tial in­vestors lead­ing to missed op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic growth and and job cre­ation and ul­ti­mate­ly dis­ad­van­tag­ing the peo­ple who will ben­e­fit from these in­vest­ments.”

Row­ley al­so re­spond­ed to econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran who said over the past 12 years more than $US25 bil­lion has gone miss­ing from this coun­try, mak­ing this na­tion the “world’s largest los­er of for­eign ex­change.” Dukha­ran was us­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s glob­al data­base for 2011-2022.

The PM ad­mit­ted that he on­ly had time to read the head­line and the first para­graph of the sto­ry in a dai­ly news­pa­per yes­ter­day but asked: “What kind of jack­ass­ness is that?”

He said he was con­cerned about the go-to peo­ple who pro­vide the nar­ra­tive in this coun­try.

“Where in God’s name is that mon­ey com­ing from to be lost?” Row­ley asked.