The sale of gas sta­tions owned by Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um and the pri­vati­sa­tion of the port of Port-of-Spain are two mea­sures which are long over­due, Bri­an Hack­ett the Ter­ri­to­ry Leader of Pw­C­Trinidad and To­ba­go has said.

Hack­ett made the state­ment in the PwC’s bud­get mem­o­ran­dum ti­tled Re­cov­er and Re­set - 2020 and be­yond.

“We ap­plaud the firm de­ci­sions tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to take some ini­tial con­crete steps to re­struc­ture the state sec­tor, re­set the econ­o­my and cur­tail ex­pen­di­ture both at the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor lev­els. In par­tic­u­lar, we ap­plaud the re­moval of the im­po­si­tion of fixed re­tail mar­gins for all liq­uid pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts for pe­tro­le­um re­tail­ers and deal­ers,” Hack­ett stat­ed.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, gas sta­tions owned by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Co (NP) will now be of­fered for sale to the pri­vate sec­tor with first pref­er­ence to be giv­en to ex­ist­ing deal­ers and con­ces­sion­aires,” he stat­ed.

“While it is not the on­ly, or in­deed, the most im­por­tant cri­te­ri­on that should guide the di­vest­ment of pub­lic as­sets, we do await fur­ther de­tails on how this di­vest­ment will be con­fig­ured to en­sure that val­ue to the peo­ple to Trinidad and To­ba­go is ap­pro­pri­ate­ly max­imised whilst en­sur­ing the widest prac­ti­cal cov­er­age of re­tail sta­tions re­mains with­in our twin is­land state,” Hack­ett said.

He then men­tioned the gov­ern­ment’s plans to “pri­va­tise the man­age­r­i­al, op­er­a­tional and fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties of the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We are hope­ful that this pri­vati­sa­tion will be un­der­tak­en in the con­text of a co­her­ent and im­ple­mentable na­tion­al port pol­i­cy. Both mea­sures have been long over­due, and we look for­ward to fur­ther ini­tia­tives in the com­ing years to re­duce the re­gret­table ex­tent to which the state still par­tic­i­pates in our lo­cal econ­o­my,” Hack­ett said.

Hack­ett said it is PwC’s hope that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic will con­tin­ue to pro­vide re­al and sus­tain­able im­pe­tus to im­ple­ment much need­ed mea­sures such as the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the pub­lic sec­tor and the nar­row­ing of the dig­i­tal di­vide across the na­tion.

“Giv­en the sys­temic in­equal­i­ty which the pan­dem­ic has fur­ther re­vealed with re­spect to the abil­i­ty of all of our stu­dents to gain ac­cess to ef­fec­tive tu­ition, we are hope­ful that the ini­tia­tive to pro­vide 45,000 in­ter­net WiFi hotspots for stu­dents in need, the ex­pan­sion of ex­ist­ing Wi-Fi hotspots and the es­tab­lish­ment of in­ter­net cafes across all ar­eas of the coun­try will have the in­tend­ed ef­fect of bal­anc­ing the scales with­in our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and in­deed our wider so­ci­ety,” he stat­ed.

Hack­ett said the pan­dem­ic has shown us ex­act­ly how in­ter­con­nect­ed and in­ter­de­pen­dent we are.

“How­ev­er, it al­so re­sult­ed in one pos­i­tive for our small na­tion as dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion could pro­vide re­gion­al and wider glob­al op­por­tu­ni­ties. The dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the coun­try could be the cat­a­lyst to move many busi­ness­es from a mar­ket of po­ten­tial buy­ers of 1.4 mil­lion to over 7 bil­lion,” Hack­ett stat­ed.

“From our PwC ex­pe­ri­ence, I can at­test that had we not made the move a few years ago to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of al­most every as­pect of our op­er­a­tions, the adap­ta­tion to the so called ‘new nor­mal’ would not have been as seam­less for our team and to the con­trary, it would have re­quired a sud­den and deep learn­ing curve for our busi­ness,” he stat­ed.