Richard Lord

Cab­i­net yes­ter­day au­tho­rised Trinidad Lake As­phalt to sign a three-year con­tract with Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed for the sup­ply of as­phalt to Chi­na. En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said this dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. It was chaired by Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­istry, Sen­a­tor Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith.

Ram­nar­ine said T&T would earn close to $50 mil­lion in for­eign ex­change dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the con­tract.

"With this new deal with the Chi­nese, it is ex­pect­ed that per­sons who are on the tem­po­rary staff (112 peo­ple) will be brought on to the per­ma­nent staff," Ram­nar­ine added. He said un­der the agree­ment Chi­na rail­way would work with Lake As­phalt "to in­vest in re­search and de­vel­op­ment aimed at the down­stream mar­ket." He said the earn­ings from the con­tract would al­low Lake As­phalt "to mod­ern­ize and re­tool" for the chal­lenges of the fu­ture. (RL)