To­day, we con­clude a two-part Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive in­ter­view by Ira Math­ur with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. In it, he ad­dress­es Venezue­lan mi­grants, the im­pact of COVID-19, the Petrotrin deal and oth­er is­sues.

Q: The Unit­ed Na­tions claims there are be­tween 40-60,000 Venezue­lan refugees here. Are Venezue­lan mi­grants a bur­den or an as­set?

A: Those who call out the in­flat­ed num­bers of 40-60,000 are pur­vey­ors of pro­pa­gan­da. We ac­knowl­edge just over 16,000 reg­is­tered Venezue­lans. The oth­ers are il­le­gal im­mi­grants. We con­duct­ed the reg­is­tra­tion of Venezue­lan refugees in full pub­lic view, and there were no lines when the reg­is­tra­tion end­ed.

To those who didn’t reg­is­ter, I want to send a strong mes­sage: ‘You don’t want the au­thor­i­ties to know who you are and that you are here, and we don’t want you here. When you come il­le­gal­ly, you are open­ing the coun­try to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment firearms, flesh trade every man­ner of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.’

If you come in il­le­gal­ly, we are go­ing to stop you on the ocean, stop you on the bor­der, find you in the coun­try, ap­pre­hend you, and we are go­ing to repa­tri­ate you.’

Those who are here legal­ly are not a bur­den as the State does not sup­port them. Many are em­ployed and quite pro­duc­tive.

Q: Are you wor­ried about what could hap­pen to us if Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro is top­pled?

A: Noth­ing. Maduro doesn’t run Trinidad and To­ba­go, he is Venezuela’s pres­i­dent.

We are a sov­er­eign state and re­quired to make our way in the world re­gard­less of what­ev­er hap­pens in any oth­er coun­try.

We are a neigh­bour of Venezuela. And it doesn’t mat­ter who is run­ning Venezuela. It is our near­est neigh­bour; sev­en miles from here with 33 mil­lion peo­ple. It doesn’t mat­ter who is in charge down there when it comes to the in­ter­est of T&T cit­i­zens, I pick up the phone, and I talk to that per­son.

The Gov­ern­ment of T&T is elect­ed to pro­tect the in­ter­ests of T&T first, and that is what we will con­tin­ue to do.

Q: How has COVID-19 af­fect­ed our econ­o­my? Many gas-based in­dus­tries in Pt Lisas ap­pear to have moth­balled their plants.

A: COVID has hit us hard, shrink­ing our econ­o­my by 10 per cent, even as we con­tin­ue to sup­port our hard­est-hit cit­i­zens at a big cost. As an oil and gas pro­duc­er, our pro­duc­tion and sale of oil has dropped glob­al­ly. COVID-19 came at a time when our oil and gas prices were al­ready soft­en­ing and had the ef­fect of fur­ther re­duc­ing con­sump­tion of methanol, urea am­mo­nia, LNG, oil and gas. It was a per­fect storm. Some plants in Point Lisas have shut down. Just to­day I was ad­vised by BP Trinidad they are re­duc­ing their staff by 25%. All gas and oil mar­kets are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the same thing due to re­duced de­mand. Thou­sands of planes are on the ground, few­er cars are mov­ing about.

Q: With falling en­er­gy prices now, will you raise rev­enue for the na­tion­al bud­get?

A: The na­tion­al bud­get must be pre­sent­ed in the se­ri­ous sce­nario of man­ag­ing an econ­o­my down­wards with­out col­laps­ing it.

Our peo­ple must pay at­ten­tion to the re­al­i­ties of our re­duced cir­cum­stances.

We are staving off eco­nom­ic col­lapse since the coun­try had be­come ac­cus­tomed to spend­ing and liv­ing off a bud­get of 63 bil­lion dol­lars. Re­cent­ly, gov­ern­ment rev­enues dropped to 43 bil­lion.

We don’t have a strong enough rev­enue stream to sus­tain the ser­vic­ing of the coun­try. We’ve used a lot of debt and short term bor­row­ings to keep it on an even keel.

Still, the en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains our best bet. We have been strength­en­ing our rev­enue stream against the odds, in­clud­ing re­vis­ing con­tracts which will boost rev­enue, im­prov­ing pro­duc­tion vol­umes and pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty busi­ness in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Q: Are you on track with the prop­er­ty tax?

A: Yes. The court has giv­en us pa­ra­me­ters to meet; we will meet those, col­lect tax that will not be oner­ous giv­en the large num­ber of peo­ple pay­ing it, and, as part of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, make the funds avail­able to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies to ser­vice their com­mu­ni­ties and the en­vi­rons of peo­ples prop­er­ty will be looked af­ter. We will al­so vig­or­ous­ly min­imise tax eva­sion in gen­er­al.

Q: Are we go­ing to dip in­to the Her­itage & Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund?

A: That’s what sav­ings are for, a rainy day, and this is a storm. We have not touched the cap­i­tal yet, which re­mains the same as five years back.

Q: The pri­vate sec­tor is com­plain­ing about the short­age of for­eign ex­change.

A: To bat­tle COVID eco­nom­ic con­trac­tion, the US gov­ern­ment print­ed two tril­lion dol­lars and gave it to its peo­ple. They don’t have to make the mon­ey. They just print it. But for us, every US dol­lars we spend, we must earn it. So the de­mand for more FX is just that, a de­mand.

Take med­i­cine. We must pay for all the drugs in FX. We can’t buy them in TT dol­lars. We pay for the food in FX. The ques­tion is how much of what we im­port in a free mar­ket do we re­al­ly need?

WASA’s wa­ter is as good or bet­ter as any in the world, but we buy wa­ter. It’s an is­sue of pri­or­i­ties.

Our abil­i­ty to earn sig­nif­i­cant FX through agri­cul­ture and oth­er means is lim­it­ed. What we can do is re­duce our FX ex­pen­di­ture by pro­duc­ing and con­sum­ing as much lo­cal food as we can. We have been brought up eat­ing oth­er peo­ple’s food. We need to pri­ori­tise our a) use of FX and b) earn more.

Q: You speak of earn­ing FX but our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has long com­plained of red tape. We rank ex­cep­tion­al­ly low in do­ing busi­ness with the world.

A: We are 105 in 190. I agree it is not a good rank­ing. We can and will do bet­ter. We are mov­ing to digi­tise the coun­try’s sys­tems in all ar­eas of gov­er­nance and that will al­low us to do bet­ter busi­ness. This re­quires chang­ing mind­sets and deal­ing with sig­nif­i­cant push­back.

Al­so, is­land de­vel­op­ing states like us must fight dai­ly for our ex­is­tence, giv­en that we are sub­ject to the va­garies of large coun­tries.

Take Cu­ba. If Cu­ba pros­pers, we pros­per. We opened an of­fice there. One Amer­i­can pres­i­dent opens to Cu­ba and we do well, and an­oth­er clos­es it, and we don’t. In the mar­ket place we op­er­ate, no­body is do­ing us any favours.

Q: Will you use agri­cul­ture to cre­ate food se­cu­ri­ty, di­ver­si­fy and spend less FX?

A: We are short of farm­ers in the coun­try and there’s a lot of fer­tile un­farmed agri­cul­tur­al land. In our five-year Road Map to Re­cov­ery, we plan to in­vest heav­i­ly in agri­cul­tur­al ex­pan­sion with in­cen­tives for new farm­ers.

I have man­dat­ed the Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vices Fitzger­ald Hinds to de­vel­op a pool of farm­ers gen­uine­ly in­ter­est­ed in a ca­reer in farm­ing who will be sup­port­ed and sus­tained to in­crease agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, even as we con­tin­ue to sup­port our cur­rent farm­ers.

Q: What in­cen­tives are you giv­ing peo­ple in agri­cul­ture?

A: We have six pages of in­cen­tives for farm­ers. Agri­cul­ture is tax-free. What greater in­cen­tive you want? The ques­tion is, are our young peo­ple will­ing to go from whiling away the day to sweat­ing in the fields?

Q: Will you have to de­val­ue?

A: Not yet. But if there is fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion we may. You al­lud­ed to pover­ty, and the hu­man con­di­tion and a de­val­u­a­tion pos­es a threat to this.

Q: What is the sta­tus of the sale of Petrotrin? How soon will it be sold and is the sale still on track to the Pa­tri­ot­ic Tech­nolo­gies com­pa­ny (OW­TU)?

A: Pa­tri­ot­ic made us the best of­fer and was se­lect­ed. We are cur­rent­ly work­ing out con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments on which the out­come will de­pend. They are close, but it’s not fi­nalised.

Last Au­gust, a thor­ough re­view of Petrotrin re­vealed an 850 mil­lion US dol­lar debt. We had to ei­ther pay the debt or re­fi­nance it and couldn’t do so with­out se­vere fi­nan­cial con­se­quences to the Trea­sury. Re­struc­tur­ing al­lowed us to cre­ate the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd., which is ser­vic­ing that debt with­out a gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee, pay­ing the tax­es to the coun­try and mak­ing a prof­it of over a bil­lion dol­lars. The down­side was we had to close the re­fin­ery. The up­side to that was we saved the na­tion­al fi­nan­cial econ­o­my.

Q: A union tra­di­tion­al­ly fo­cuss­es on em­ploy­ees’ in­ter­ests rather than prof­itabil­i­ty. Are you con­fi­dent a trade union can run Petrotrin?

A: That is a ques­tion for the trade union. Are they pre­pared to make busi­ness de­ci­sions, be­cause what they put to gov­ern­ment is not a trade union pro­pos­al but a bil­lion-dol­lar busi­ness pro­pos­al with se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial and oth­er im­pli­ca­tions.

It’s a mas­sive un­der­tak­ing, and the gov­ern­ment is not go­ing to take it light­ly – the same way we didn’t close the re­fin­ery light­ly. Set­tling on the buy­er is a se­ri­ous de­ci­sion.

Q: Any pos­si­bil­i­ty you may pull back from the Petrotrin/OW­TU deal?

A: If we are not hap­py and if it turns out to be some­thing we can’t ac­cept then we won’t. There are no two ways about it.

We are hop­ing we can come to a de­ci­sion all par­ties can agree on and con­clude the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment. I’m not di­rect­ly in­volved but know that it’s a vast le­gal un­der­tak­ing on be­half of the State. Once you sign that doc­u­ment, it’s a trans­fer of a sig­nif­i­cant as­set, a se­ri­ous le­gal un­der­tak­ing and must be to the sat­is­fac­tion of all par­ties.

Q: Let’s dis­cuss WASA. (a) The Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) re­port­ed that 46.5 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion don’t get a 24/7 sup­ply of pipe-borne wa­ter; (b) The Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank has es­ti­mat­ed that WASA is over­staffed by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000 peo­ple and sub­sidised by $1.8 bn an­nu­al­ly. Any plans to ad­dress this?

A: We are not sat­is­fied with the avail­abil­i­ty of wa­ter to the pop­u­la­tion and sec­ond­ly, can­not re­ly on the con­sid­er­able sub­sidy that is be­com­ing less avail­able. The Cab­i­net is await­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of WASA from the Min­is­ter of Works, af­ter which we will act to re­struc­ture WASA while aim­ing to min­imise the loss of jobs, max­imise pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, re­duce the sub­sidy and pro­vide an ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply to many more than 46 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

Q: The slow courts and num­ber of young men lan­guish­ing in re­mand in our jails have been a peren­ni­al is­sue in T&T. How do you re­store faith in the jus­tice sys­tem in T&T?

A: Le­gal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na vast­ly re­duced the num­bers of those who for­mer­ly would have been in­car­cer­at­ed. Sim­i­lar­ly, by re­mov­ing mo­tor ve­hi­cle cas­es from courts with our cur­rent point sys­tem, we have re­duced court mat­ters by over 100,000. We in­creased the num­ber of courts from 32 to 64, hired more judges and have be­gun to use tech­nol­o­gy so that court hear­ings can be done vir­tu­al­ly and from the pris­ons.

Re­gard­ing our chron­ic crime is­sue, we start­ed by mak­ing our po­lice the best pos­si­ble re­spon­der to crime and to serve us.

We got the reg­u­la­tions changed in par­lia­ment, went to court, the UNC fought it in the court, we won it in the court, to ap­point a CoP and to­day there is a COP in charge of the po­lice. And what­ev­er dif­fi­cul­ties we have now it is far bet­ter than what it was.

Q: What’s slow­ing down the pub­lic ser­vice?

A: Post-in­de­pen­dence sys­tems like the ser­vice com­mis­sions that ap­point civ­il ser­vants are to­day be­he­moths en­tire­ly at vari­ance with the coun­try’s best in­ter­ests. Not on­ly is the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion bad busi­ness with its ob­so­les­cence and an­ti­quat­ed sys­tems but it feeds down to man­agers in pub­lic ser­vice cre­at­ing a col­lec­tive lethar­gy.

Ser­vice Com­mis­sions are en­shrined in our Con­sti­tu­tion so can’t ad­just mean­ing­ful­ly with­out a cer­tain amount of par­lia­men­tary seats.

Q: Can you not work with the Op­po­si­tion with some of these is­sues in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est?

A: Tell me one thing they have sup­port­ed for the ben­e­fit of the coun­try? When we took Cli­co to court, they called it a Ponzi scheme. When we were do­ing our best to keep our cit­i­zens safe from a dead­ly virus, they called for open bor­ders, and when we en­cour­aged peo­ple to wear masks, they said it was bul­ly­ing.

Dr Fuad Khan was a Min­is­ter of Health in the UNC gov­ern­ment. He told peo­ple that we had no fixed mask code here, cit­ing the UK when the UK was break­ing records with the worst COVID man­age­ment with al­most 50,000 deaths and had stopped record­ing deaths in old peo­ple’s homes. So no, I don’t ex­pect Op­po­si­tion sup­port for the ben­e­fit of the coun­try.

Q: What are you do­ing for the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble in T&T.

A: I am sit­ting here be­hind this desk as Prime Min­is­ter be­cause some­body gave me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to school, get an ed­u­ca­tion and find mean­ing­ful work. If you don’t have a road to get to agri­cul­tur­al land, where is the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use the land to farm? If you don’t have teach­ers get­ting to school and teach­ing chil­dren, what is the op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to get ed­u­cat­ed and com­pete for the jobs?

It’s about pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to all. The sta­tis­tics show some of the most im­pov­er­ished peo­ple live around San­gre Grande, La Brea, Point Fortin, North-east­ern cor­ner. We are tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mote, and ne­glect­ed com­mu­ni­ties through in­fra­struc­ture, pri­mar­i­ly roads, to con­nect and in­te­grate them to the rest in the coun­try and econ­o­my though agri­cul­ture, in­dus­try or tourism. Our new Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion is man­dat­ed to link with all stake­hold­ers for a trans­for­ma­tion of our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem so we pro­duce peo­ple who can ful­fil their full po­ten­tial as cit­i­zens? We can pro­vide sup­port with free health care, free ed­u­ca­tion and fi­nan­cial aid but no so­cial work­er can re­place the guid­ing hand of par­ents.

Q: What would you tell cit­i­zens go­ing through this pan­dem­ic and eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ty?

A: Things are not falling apart. Bad times don’t last for­ev­er. Don’t lis­ten to the neg­a­tive voic­es. We are go­ing through a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od but it should not get us down. Stop beat­ing up on your­self and mak­ing as if you are liv­ing in a ter­ri­ble en­vi­ron­ment. Com­pared to the rest of the world we are do­ing rea­son­ably well.

Are we fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties? Yes. Do we have dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions to make, bit­ter med­i­cine to swal­low? Yes. We can sur­vive the dif­fi­cul­ties we face now be­cause our par­ents sur­vived and thrived through worse to al­low us a bet­ter life than they had.

It’s a call for us to be even bet­ter be­cause the moth­er of in­ven­tion is ne­ces­si­ty.

We will come through these days if we all de­cide each day to be our best selves for the ben­e­fit not just of our­selves, but oth­ers.

Q: Rate your per­for­mance as PM.

A: I must ask my wife. She thinks I am crazy (laughs). Se­ri­ous­ly, I will leave that to the na­tion.