PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day he ex­pects the find­ings of the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee, set up to rec­om­mend a buy­er for the moth­balled Petrotrin re­fin­ery, will be pre­sent­ed soon.

The Prime Min­is­ter was asked about re­port at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, and he said he ex­pect­ed that in­fo­ma­tion to be pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net soon.

"I don't know the date, but I know they're at work. I pre­sume that some­time in the next week or two, they will present some­thing to the­Cab­i­net, be­cause they've been at work for al­most a month now," said the Prime Min­is­ter.

"The sub­mis­sions have been made, and they are now go­ing through them, and they will do the eval­u­a­tion. That com­mit­tee is work­ing, and I ex­pect that some­time in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture, they will ap­proach the Cab­i­net with some of the find­ings or some of the rec­om­men­da­tions."

Ear­li­er this month, it was con­firmed that the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee chaired by Vish­nu Dhan­paul, the for­mer per­ma­nent sec­tary in the Min­istry of, now High Com­mis­sion­er from Trinidad and To­ba­go to the Unit­ed King­dom, was work­ing on the re­port.

How­ev­er the Prime Min­is­ter said he ex­pect­ed to be out of the coun­try by the time the re­port is pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net. He told re­porters at the press con­fer­ence he is set to leave the coun­try on Sun­day for an over­due med­ical check­up. 

"By the time I get back, I ex­pect that some­thing would have come in from the com­mit­tee, and you will be in­formed. We don't have any­thing to hide. And we are keen to have some­thing come out of it. We hope that some­thing will come out of it that we can use the equip­ment (or find them) op­er­a­tional. That will be good news for us, if we do find some­thing. I un­der­stand that there were about 10 sub­mis­sions, and out of it two or three of them ap­pear to be us­able," said Dr Row­ley.

The re­fin­ery was closed in Oc­to­ber 2018 af­ter the Gov­ern­ment deemed it nec­es­sary to re­struc­ture Petrotrin in the face of bil­lions of dol­lars in loss­es an­nu­al­ly.

The gov­ern­ment has been shop­ping for a buy­er for the re­fin­ery since then.