GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan says the de­ci­sion by Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd to pull out of the re­fin­ery bid will not tar­nish this coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age.

Sage­wan said Jin­dal was not the on­ly po­ten­tial in­vestor for the re­fin­ery and as such there are still oth­ers to be con­sid­ered, adding that the deal is not off the ta­ble.

She not­ed the big­ger pic­ture is the restart­ing the re­fin­ery and the cost to do so.

"This is not the first or sec­ond at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to bring back the re­fin­ery. The longer it takes the more dif­fi­cult it takes to bring back in­to op­er­a­tion the in­fra­struc­ture. The threat is not so much Jin­dal pulling out but whether the cost would be worth the while of any po­ten­tial in­vestor so to do," Sage­wan ex­plained.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley made the an­nounce­ment of Jin­dal's pulling out while swear­ing in the new ex­ec­u­tive of the PNM’s Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy on Sat­ur­day.

Row­ley blamed the Op­po­si­tion’s per­son­al at­tacks against the com­pa­ny's chair­man In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal who had vis­it­ed Trinidad in June.

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 T&T.”

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, and for the PM to ad­dress al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing Jin­dal as the Op­po­si­tion al­so ques­tioned Jin­dal's re­port­ed con­nec­tion to Venezuela.

How­ev­er, Sage­wan said as Jin­dal fell un­der the cat­e­go­ry of for­eign in­vestor there was noth­ing wrong with a call for due dili­gence re­gard­ing Jin­dal or any oth­er po­ten­tial in­vestor.

Not­ing there are sev­er­al de­ter­rents al­ready fac­ing po­ten­tial in­vestors, Sage­wan said, "Crime be­ing the biggest is­sue. Peo­ple are very con­cerned about bring­ing their mon­ey where it could be un­der threat be­cause of the high lev­el of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

"The for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try is an­oth­er ma­jor one be­cause a for­eign in­vestor wants to know there is easy with the abil­i­ty to repa­tri­ate prof­its to their home coun­try. Then there is the ease of do­ing busi­ness and the length of time it takes to reg­is­ter a busi­ness and the is­sues re­lat­ing to con­tracts. There is so much from a pol­i­cy lev­el we are do­ing wrong."