Renu­ka Singh

The Gov­ern­ment will en­gage the pri­vate sec­tor in its search for vi­able vac­cines out­side the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The de­ci­sion comes af­ter a brief blow-up be­tween the State and con­glom­er­ate ANSA McAL over a mis­un­der­stand­ing on whether the Gov­ern­ment could fund the US$8.4 mil­lion pur­chase of 351,000 vac­cines from Pfiz­er or need­ed ANSA McAL to step in to make the pur­chase.

While ANSA McAL Group CEO An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III be­lieved the Gov­ern­ment had re­quest­ed his com­pa­ny’s in­ter­ven­tion as the State was un­able to amass the US$8.4m at short no­tice, both Deyals­ingh and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­nied the State need­ed any fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to buy vac­cines.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Deyals­ingh said Gov­ern­ment had de­cid­ed to work with not on­ly ANSA McAL but the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T on se­cur­ing vac­cines for the coun­try.

“I am pleased to say that Mr An­tho­ny Sab­ga III of ANSA and Mr Ra­jiv Diptee of SATT (Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T) and my­self have de­cid­ed to be for­ward-look­ing. In this vein, we will be work­ing to­geth­er to pro­cure safe WHO-ap­proved vac­cines for T&T if avail­able to the pri­vate sec­tor. We as­sure the pub­lic that if and when there is a vi­able out­come, we will alert the pub­lic,” Deyals­ingh said.

In a two-page in­ter­nal state­ment to em­ploy­ees on Mon­day, Sab­ga had not­ed that the con­glom­er­ate al­so ne­go­ti­at­ed the pur­chase of one mil­lion vac­cines. While Sab­ga did not state who the man­u­fac­tur­er was, Deyals­ingh said ANSA McAL had ne­go­ti­at­ed the pur­chase from the In­di­an-based man­u­fac­tur­er Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia (SII), which man­u­fac­tures the Ox­ford As­traZeneca vac­cine now be­ing used glob­al­ly. The Gov­ern­ment al­so wrote to that com­pa­ny through In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Arun Ku­mar Sahu back in Feb­ru­ary but was told the man­u­fac­tur­er was not tak­ing any more or­ders as it was over­whelmed by or­ders. The same vac­cine, un­der the Co­v­ishield ban­ner, has been do­nat­ed by In­dia to sev­er­al coun­tries as part of its “vac­cine Maitri” dri­ve.

Hours be­fore this res­o­lu­tion be­tween the pri­vate sec­tor and the Gov­ern­ment though, there seemed to be con­tra­dic­tions in the rec­ol­lec­tion of what oc­curred in a Feb­ru­ary 17 meet­ing by the par­ties.

On Mon­day, just af­ter Sab­ga’s state­ment hit the me­dia, Row­ley dis­missed the idea that the State need­ed fund­ing from ANSA McAL.

“Just re­mem­ber when you hear that rub­bish that the Cen­tral Bank is the state banker and if the Gov­ern­ment can­not find USD to fund vac­cines in a pan­dem­ic then the Cab­i­net will know that and the coun­try will know that,” he said in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

In Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh al­so said the min­istry did not seek fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the con­glom­er­ate, af­ter UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark asked about the con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments giv­en by the Gov­ern­ment and ANSA McAL over the pur­chase of the 351,000 vac­cines.

But Deyals­ingh said the Gov­ern­ment did have the mon­ey to pay for the vac­cines.

“This of­fer came out of a meet­ing re­quest­ed and arranged by the Min­istry of Health be­cause peo­ple were reach­ing out to me per­son­al­ly,” he said.

“We fa­cil­i­tat­ed the meet­ing, they asked us what our needs were and they were will­ing to help. They were will­ing to help with every­thing from stor­age of vac­cines, to trans­port, to the pro­vi­sion of peo­ple, to the pro­vi­sion of ve­hi­cles.”

Deyals­ingh read in­to the Hansard a Feb­ru­ary 19 let­ter from ANSA Group CEO An­tho­ny Sab­ga III.

Deyals­ingh quot­ed what he said were “two rel­e­vant para­graphs.”

“How­ev­er, in or­der to meet our com­mit­ment, we kind­ly re­quest that GORTT en­sure that an ad­e­quate sup­ply of US cur­ren­cy is made avail­able to ANSA Mer­chant Bank to en­able us to pur­chase these dos­es in a time­ly man­ner. That an­swers the US cur­ren­cy part,” he read.

“Fur­ther, we al­so re­quest that for all, not on­ly ANSA, but for all pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies such as our­selves which pur­chase vac­cines for the ex­clu­sive use by GORTT in vac­ci­nat­ing the pub­lic, that a con­tri­bu­tion by 100 per cent be ful­ly cred­it­ed against tax­es payable for the year 2021.

“There is no con­fu­sion, we are per­fect­ly clear,” Deyals­ingh added.

An­oth­er hic­cup be­tween the two groups was the pro­vi­sion of tax con­ces­sions for any pri­vate com­pa­ny that as­sist­ed with the pro­cure­ment of vac­cines that are do­nat­ed to the State for vac­ci­na­tions of cit­i­zens.

This could amount to a rough­ly $50 mil­lion tax break, ac­cord­ing to Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T head Ra­jiv Diptee said in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Sab­ga’s state­ment al­so re­vealed that the group lat­er learned that Deyals­ingh had made the same re­quest to the en­er­gy com­pa­nies and by Feb­ru­ary 24, the con­glom­er­ate re­newed its of­fer to as­sist “if en­er­gy com­pa­nies could not raise the full amount.”

“On March 12, 2021, I re­ceived a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 26, 2021, from Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh that would make all of you proud,” Sab­ga said in his state­ment to em­ploy­ees.

Sab­ga then quot­ed a let­ter from Deyals­ingh which stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment “ap­plaud­ed” the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and al­so ac­knowl­edged ANSA McAL’s “self­less part­ner­ship and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to coun­try.”

How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day said that that thank you was sent to the en­tire pri­vate sec­tor and was in no way re­lat­ed to the ac­qui­si­tion of vac­cines.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Mon­day, Deyals­ingh said he nev­er met with ANSA McAL one-on-one but had a round­table with sev­er­al com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“At no time did I, as Min­is­ter of Health, meet with ANSA McAL on Wednes­day,” Deyals­ingh said.

“What there was, was a round­table meet­ing with the pri­vate sec­tor, en­er­gy cham­bers, bank­ing and oth­er pri­vate sec­tors on the af­ter­noon of Wednes­day, chaired by Dr Stew­art Smith, be­cause all pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies were reach­ing out to us to as­sist.

“ANSA McAL was a part but at no time did I meet with them, nor did I at any time make a di­rect re­quest of ANSA McAL on vac­cines.” He added, “There was a gen­er­al meet­ing with the pri­vate sec­tor. Those are the facts.”

When asked about ANSA McAL will­ing­ly vol­un­teer­ing US8.4 mil­lion to buy the vac­cines, Deyals­ingh said he “did not know about that”.

“I did not ap­proach ANSA McAL,” he said.

Deyals­ingh said the let­ter that ANSA quot­ed as hav­ing been re­ceived on March 12 was not sent to ANSA alone but to the pri­vate sec­tor for their ef­forts in 2020.

“It was a gen­er­al let­ter thank­ing all com­pa­nies that con­tributed to­wards things last year. It had noth­ing to do with the round­table meet­ing. It was a let­ter I sent to all pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies who as­sist­ed with the COVID re­sponse in 2020, it was not unique to ANSA McAL,” he said.

Re­gard­ing the one mil­lion se­cured vac­cines by the con­glom­er­ate, Deyals­ingh said he had asked ANSA McAL to pro­duce some de­tails of that deal.

“I have asked them to pro­vide de­tails of who is the agent. They can’t sup­ply that as yet,” Deyals­ingh said.

Round­table at­ten­dess mum on de­tails of meet­ing

En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T CEO Dax Dri­ver yes­ter­day con­firmed that he at­tend­ed the Feb­ru­ary 17 round­table meet­ing with the Min­istry of Health, chaired by Dr Stew­art Smith, along­side oth­er top busi­ness lead­ers.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Dri­ver said he would not com­ment on what hap­pened in that meet­ing or the sub­se­quent con­tention be­tween ANSA McAL and the Gov­ern­ment. He al­so re­fused to re­veal any of the oth­er busi­ness lead­ers who at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

Dri­ver did say that the Min­is­ter of Health was not at that meet­ing that he at­tend­ed.

Fel­low busi­ness leader and T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce head Gabriel Faria con­firmed that he at­tend­ed the same meet­ing but said it was un­clear what the is­sue was be­tween the State and con­glom­er­ate ANSA McAL.

Faria al­so said he could not re­call re­ceiv­ing or hav­ing sight of the thank you let­ter that the Min­istry of Health re­ferred to and al­so ref­er­enced in Sab­ga’s state­ment.

“As a coun­try to­day, we need to fo­cus on work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to en­sure that we have a com­pre­hen­sive vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign to save lives and liveli­hoods. The pri­vate sec­tor is ready to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment in any way it can,” Faria said.

Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T head Ra­jiv Diptee yes­ter­day said he al­so did not re­ceive any thank you let­ter from the min­istry.

“It would have been nice to get one,” Diptee added.

How­ev­er, Diptee said he was in sup­port of ANSA McAL in this mat­ter.

At the Feb­ru­ary 17 round­table with key busi­ness lead­ers, the Min­istry of Health de­tailed its four av­enues for vac­cine sup­ply, which in­clud­ed the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty, the African Unions/Med­i­cine Coun­cil, the CARI­COM ini­tia­tive with In­dia and di­rect bi­lat­er­al talks with five man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Ac­cord­ing to that pre­sen­ta­tion, those five man­u­fac­tur­ers are Pfiz­er, Mod­er­na, As­tra Zeneca, Sinopharm and John­son and John­son. The min­istry said talks with Pfiz­er be­gan in De­cem­ber 2020 and there is a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment in place. Talks with Mod­er­na and As­traZeneca be­gan in Oc­to­ber 2020. There is no time­line as­cribed to Sinopharm, the Chi­na-made vac­cine which is yet to re­ceive World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval. There is al­so no time­line for the J&J sin­gle jab vac­cine but dis­cus­sions were slat­ed to be­gin once emer­gency use was grant­ed. John­son & John­son re­ceived that emer­gency use clear­ance on Feb­ru­ary 27.

Un­der the Cari­com re­quest to In­dia head­ing, the Min­istry of Health stat­ed that it re­quest­ed 250,000 Co­v­ishield vac­cines, which is the vac­cine man­u­fac­tured by the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia. The African Union ini­tia­tive al­lo­cat­ed T&T some 226,000 vac­cines to be de­ter­mined by CARPHA.

With re­gards to the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty, the min­istry told the busi­ness lead­ers that the State paid $10 mil­lion to CO­V­AX on Sep­tem­ber 29 “as a down­pay­ment”. That pre­sen­ta­tion al­so stat­ed that the first de­liv­ery of 100,000 and 117,000 and 120,000 dos­es of As­traZeneca vac­cine was ex­pect­ed by March 2021. How­ev­er, the Pan-Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) up­dat­ed that de­liv­ery date to the first week in April and re­duced the dos­es to sep­a­rate tranch­es of 33,600 in the first in­stance and 72,000 to fol­low.