Econ­o­mists and po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists are rub­bish­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s sug­ges­tion that the Op­po­si­tion is dri­ving away for­eign in­vestors. In­stead, they say the Gov­ern­ment should blame crime and bu­reau­cra­cy for dam­ag­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

On Fri­day evening, Row­ley read ex­cerpts of a let­ter sent to him by In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal, the chair of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd, at the swear­ing-in of the new ex­ec­u­tive of the PNM’s Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy.

In the let­ter, Jin­dal said his com­pa­ny would no longer bid for the Petrotrin re­fin­ery be­cause com­ments made by the “gov­ern­ment in wait­ing” rep­re­sent­ed a lev­el of risk and po­ten­tial in­sta­bil­i­ty that did not align with pro­vid­ing a pre­dictable and se­cure in­vest­ment en­vi­ron­ment.

“The char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion I ex­pe­ri­enced mere­ly for con­sid­er­ing the in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty in the Guaracara Re­fin­ery was deeply dis­heart­en­ing and dis­cour­ag­ing,” the let­ter stat­ed.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath yes­ter­day said Jin­dal may have had more se­ri­ous rea­sons for pulling out, adding the Op­po­si­tion was sim­ply hold­ing Gov­ern­ment ac­count­able.

“Mr Jin­dal took an easy ap­proach out by sim­ply blam­ing the Op­po­si­tion in say­ing that he’s not go­ing to in­vest. If, how­ev­er, his com­pa­ny was ready and will­ing to in­vest in Trinidad and To­ba­go, they would have been able to deal with that.

“His con­cern was that there was some de­gree of char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion but how you could talk about Trinidad do­ing char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion when the mat­ter it­self arose in his own coun­try and he is be­fore the courts?” Ra­goonath asked.

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs agreed there may have been oth­er fac­tors that led to Jin­dal’s de­ci­sion, but did not wish to spec­u­late.

How­ev­er, she de­bunked Row­ley’s claim the UNC is turn­ing in­vestors away. She said for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) in T&T has been less than one per cent of GDP or neg­a­tive for years. Attzs said this can­not be blamed on the Op­po­si­tion, as T&T has made it­self un­at­trac­tive to in­vestors for vary­ing rea­sons.

“A chal­lenge for po­ten­tial in­vestors may well be the con­tin­ued lev­els of crime and the bu­reau­cra­cies in­volved in do­ing busi­ness lo­cal­ly—as the now dis­con­tin­ued Ease of Do­ing Busi­ness in­di­ca­tors have of­ten sug­gest­ed,” she said.

Mean­while, econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James sug­gest­ed that deals are fail­ing be­cause of Gov­ern­ment’s high-hand­ed ap­proach to avoid con­sult­ing the wider pop­u­la­tion. James said it was un­like­ly for Jin­dal to be af­fect­ed by T&T’s pol­i­tics.

“I am not aware that the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate in the coun­try has done a lot to dis­suade in­vestors in those sec­tors. I would lis­ten to the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments and treat it as or­di­nary run-of-the-mill pol­i­tics in which the gov­ern­ment in pow­er tends to treat the op­po­si­tion as though they don’t re­al­ly be­long in the coun­try and shouldn’t say any­thing about any­thing and that’s his­tor­i­cal­ly true for all gov­ern­ments I have seen,” he said.

James said while Row­ley likened Jin­dal’s de­ci­sion to the failed San­dals project, it was Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to se­ri­ous­ly con­sult the pop­u­la­tion that led to pub­lic ire.

“I would say it’s the sys­tem of au­thor­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment that led to the pub­lic re­ac­tion that bred the re­ac­tion of San­dals and if we ran a dif­fer­ent sys­tem of gov­ern­ment then we would reap dif­fer­ent re­wards. I don’t know if Dr Row­ley ex­pects cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion, to say noth­ing when the Prime Min­is­ter and the Cab­i­net makes de­ci­sions. We are not his slaves,” he said.

Over the week­end, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress said it had no re­grets over its role in Jin­dal opt­ing out of bid­ding for the moth­balled Guaracara re­fin­ery.