GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy ex­pert Gre­go­ry McGuire has de­scribed plans re­gard­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor as out­lined in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) man­i­festo, as for­ward-look­ing in terms of its fo­cus but felt that key ar­eas for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment were not ad­dressed.

Among the promis­es in the 180-page doc­u­ment was an ini­tia­tive to bal­ance do­mes­tic en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty with ex­port com­pet­i­tive­ness, en­sur­ing sus­tain­able gas pro­duc­tion, sup­ply chain ef­fi­cien­cy, do­mes­tic petro­chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion, and Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) ex­port ca­pac­i­ty and in­fra­struc­ture, with sta­ble sup­ply, com­pet­i­tive pric­ing, and in­creased lo­cal val­ue-added be­fore ex­port.

The PNM is al­so promis­ing to up­grade ex­ist­ing na­tion­al pow­er gen­er­a­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in­fra­struc­ture with clean­er, more ef­fi­cient tech­nolo­gies, and to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment a na­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry and in­fra­struc­ture frame­work to sup­port in­te­gra­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy gen­er­at­ed by house­holds and busi­ness­es in­to the na­tion­al grid.

This mea­sure, the man­i­festo said, in­cludes mech­a­nisms to al­low ex­cess pow­er to be sold back to the grid, en­cour­ag­ing clean en­er­gy adop­tion and de­cen­tralised en­er­gy pro­duc­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, McGuire said: “I think as well that it is al­so com­ple­men­tary in terms of its pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and util­is­ing, still rel­a­tive­ly cheap en­er­gy to pro­mote eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion through man­u­fac­tur­ing, etcetera.”

How­ev­er, he point­ed to the key prob­lems T&T is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing, not­ing the failed Drag­on Field gas deal, say­ing the man­i­festo seemed to avoid ad­dress­ing cur­rent prob­lems.

In com­ment­ing fur­ther on the man­i­festo and what he thought it lacked McGuire said, “In par­tic­u­lar, I don’t see the man­i­festo men­tion the im­por­tance or sig­nif­i­cance of en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy in both gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor, be­cause that in there rep­re­sents a con­sid­er­able amount of sav­ings that we could have if we were a more en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient coun­try. Al­so, it’s silent on what I call reg­u­la­to­ry ef­fi­cien­cy and ef­fec­tive­ness.”

He con­tin­ued: “I’m re­fer­ring in par­tic­u­lar to some of the reg­u­la­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with the Pe­tro­le­um Act, par­tic­u­lar­ly those re­lat­ed to the es­tab­lish­ment of what is called the Per­ma­nent Pe­tro­le­um Pric­ing Com­mit­tee and the Lo­cal Con­tent Com­mit­tee, lo­cal con­tent reg­is­tra­tion, lo­cal con­tent re­form. Those are im­por­tant el­e­ments of the Pe­tro­le­um Act that have been sort of not ad­dressed and have not been ad­dressed, and they’re sig­nif­i­cant be­cause they both im­pact on the rev­enue or the lev­el of rev­enue from the sec­tor.”

Al­so, McGuire said he had not seen any fo­cus on the up­stream busi­ness, adding that he would have thought that a com­pet­i­tive up­stream en­vi­ron­ment would be im­por­tant for T&T since the coun­try has to con­tin­ue to ex­plore and get more mol­e­cules out of the ground in its deep­er wa­ters.

Re­gard­ing en­er­gy tran­si­tion and al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy use,

McGuire said this re­quired a sup­port­ive reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment.

“So is­sues of pric­ing and feed-in tar­iffs are im­por­tant el­e­ments of that sup­port­ive, reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment,” he said, adding, “And well, at this time, un­less it’s hid­den some­where in the lan­guage, I don’t see any pieces and I thought, those are some of the things that were miss­ing from the man­i­festo.”

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Dale Par­son and se­nior econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon al­so shed their thoughts on the man­i­festo, which was launched yes­ter­day by PNM chair­man and Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, and PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley at the PNM’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters.

Par­son told Guardian Me­dia that he too was hap­py that the present gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to sup­port the small and medi­um en­ter­prise (SME) sec­tor, as he not­ed that was part of his vi­sion.

“A lot of these small busi­ness­es don’t know how to ex­pand a busi­ness or com­mer­cialise a busi­ness. I be­lieve a lot of the growth and cur­ren­cy or dol­lars float­ing in the econ­o­my can come from the SMEs.

“Most of the larg­er com­pa­nies are al­ready do­ing their part. Gov­ern­ment is putting an em­pha­sis to­wards SMEs and I find it is a very good move,” he said.

In terms of the ex­port which the gov­ern­ment has promised would be ramped up, Par­son agreed this was al­so im­por­tant es­pe­cial­ly giv­en on­go­ing glob­al trade wars and tar­iffs im­posed by the US ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The TTMA pres­i­dent, how­ev­er, said he was dis­ap­point­ed that is­sues at the port of Port-of-Spain were not ad­dressed be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion was called.

He added he had al­so hoped the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty would have been ful­ly in place be­fore April 28.

Ramkissoon, in giv­ing his take on the man­i­festo, said the ar­eas iden­ti­fied, for ex­am­ple, the cre­ative and cul­tur­al in­dus­tries, sports and even the mar­itime sec­tor, were all pos­i­tive moves for the coun­try.

How­ev­er, he said T&T should have al­ready been “way ahead in re­spect of sev­er­al of them.”

“Be that as it may, I would rec­om­mend a fo­cus on few­er things. We need to fo­cus on a few, one or two, which we might be able to do faster and achieve bet­ter, es­pe­cial­ly when the pub­lic sec­tor is not up to scratch, as all gov­ern­ments would read­i­ly ad­mit,” Ramkissoon said.

He ad­vised the im­ple­men­ta­tion of these de­pends on the qual­i­ty of pub­lic sec­tor per­son­nel and the sys­tems in the pub­lic sec­tor.