PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad & To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance (TTA­PA) is hop­ing the wind­fall ex­pect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment from high en­er­gy prices and ex­pect­ed rev­enues from gas projects in 2027 is used well to help re­sus­ci­tate the sec­tor and stim­u­late the econ­o­my.

In a fo­rum on Fri­day held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, en­ti­tled The Re­nais­sance Bud­get: Build the Econ­o­my Be­fore the Wind­fall, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ag­gre­gate Pro­duc­ers Al­liance Nigel Tenia said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to use the wind­fall wise­ly as op­posed to sim­ply spend­ing to al­le­vi­ate im­me­di­ate eco­nom­ic stress.

“Let us plan so that the al­le­vi­a­tion is not a short-term win, but more of a mid to long-term vic­to­ry that the coun­try will ex­pe­ri­ence,” said Tenia, who al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress hur­dles the as­so­ci­a­tion faced with re­gard to do­ing busi­ness.

“We need poli­cies. We need a frame­work that al­lows busi­ness to be dealt with and to be han­dled in the coun­try a lot eas­i­er than it is now,” said Tenia, who, along with oth­er mem­bers, not­ed the li­cens­ing process for min­ing and pro­cess­ing is com­plex and has cre­at­ed a bot­tle­neck that re­stricts sup­ply and in­flates con­struc­tion costs.

How­ev­er, oth­er mem­bers of the dis­cus­sion al­so raised con­cern about crime be­ing a by-prod­uct of these re­stric­tions, as an­oth­er as­so­ci­a­tion mem­ber, Howard John, not­ed un­reg­u­lat­ed quar­ry­ing trans­formed ar­eas such as San­gre Grande and Va­len­cia in­to ma­jor crim­i­nal hotspots, with an es­ti­mat­ed 90 per cent of lo­cal crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty dri­ven by the il­lic­it ag­gre­gate trade.

The dis­cus­sion al­so raised con­cerns about amend­ments to the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tion bill, as some felt the amend­ments had un­der­cut the ef­fec­tive­ness of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion.

He added that this could be fur­ther in­ten­si­fied when con­struc­tion de­mand in­creas­es fol­low­ing an in­jec­tion of funds from en­er­gy projects; in the ab­sence of strict reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight, the quar­ry­ing in­dus­try be­comes a “freefall,” with il­le­gal op­er­a­tors dig­ging wher­ev­er ma­te­ri­als can be found to meet de­mand. John point­ed to re­cent ac­tiv­i­ty in Guyana as an ex­am­ple.

“I don’t know if they didn’t see it com­ing with the oil wind­fall, but we used to get calls sev­en days a week from Guyana, not six or five days, sev­en days a week, for sup­port to get ag­gre­gate to fa­cil­i­tate what was go­ing on up there,” said John, “There’s an ag­gres­sive de­mand for ag­gre­gate, and in the ab­sence of a reg­u­la­to­ry frail rule, peo­ple go in there and they start to dig wher­ev­er they can find ma­te­ri­als, and the gov­ern­ments usu­al­ly turn a blind eye to it be­cause they can’t af­ford to sup­press it be­cause it will frus­trate the de­vel­op­ment.”

Pres­i­dent of the San Juan As­so­ci­a­tion Abrahim Ali said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to pay at­ten­tion to low­er- to medi­um-in­come earn­ers, as he not­ed much of the stag­na­tion in the con­struc­tion sec­tor was as a re­sult of eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty faced by that eco­nom­ic group.

“We have seen a de­cline in our econ­o­my, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of small and mi­cro in­dus­tries are not be­ing able to sur­vive be­cause of the flow of in­come in the pock­ets of the small peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

He called on Gov­ern­ment to pay greater at­ten­tion to Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es, as those busi­ness­es were re­spon­si­ble for in­come re­turn­ing to those house­holds.