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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Jindal hurt by character assassination, opts out of refinery bid

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191 days ago
20240804
 FILE PHOTO: Jindal Steel and Power Limited Chairman Naveen Jindal, left, meeting with Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley at the Diplomatic Centre on June 17.

FILE PHOTO: Jindal Steel and Power Limited Chairman Naveen Jindal, left, meeting with Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley at the Diplomatic Centre on June 17.

PHOTO COURTESY OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER FACEBOOK PAGE

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Dis­ap­point­ed by the op­po­si­tion’s re­ac­tion to his vis­it to T&T, In­di­an in­dus­tri­al­ist and in­vestor Naveen Jin­dal will not bid for the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery. He re­vealed this in a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley Row­ley on Ju­ly 26. Row­ley read ex­cerpts of the let­ter Jin­dal sent him when he swore in the new ex­ec­u­tive of the PNM’s Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day.

Part of the let­ter from Jin­dal to Row­ley read: “It is with great dis­ap­point­ment, there­fore, that I must ad­dress the re­ac­tion led by the of­fi­cial op­po­si­tion par­ty fol­low­ing on our vis­it. The char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion I ex­pe­ri­enced mere­ly for con­sid­er­ing the in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty in the Guaracara Re­fin­ery was deeply dis­heart­en­ing and dis­cour­ag­ing. More­over, the un­just at­tacks di­rect­ed at our groups, com­pa­nies, en­ti­ties that op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly, and are un­con­nect­ed to le­gal mat­ters mis­char­ac­terised in the lo­cal press and Par­lia­ment set a trou­bling prece­dent for po­ten­tial in­vestors plan­ning to in­vest in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Jin­dal al­so raised con­cerns about the Op­po­si­tion, stat­ing: “From our or­gan­i­sa­tion’s point of view, these ac­tions by the pur­port­ed gov­ern­ment in wait­ing raise se­ri­ous con­cerns as they rep­re­sent an el­e­ment of risk and po­ten­tial in­sta­bil­i­ty that is in­com­pat­i­ble with pro­vid­ing a pre­dictable and se­cure in­vest­ment cli­mate.”

He said the de­vel­op­ments had “shak­en con­fi­dence” and his com­pa­nies had felt com­pelled to “re­assess the vi­a­bil­i­ty of pro­ceed­ing with a for­mal bid for the re­fin­ery at this time.”

Row­ley would lat­er la­bel as “San­dals all over again.”

Since Jin­dal’s vis­it on June 17, the UNC and the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) have tak­en aim at him. The UNC called for Jin­dal to be dis­qual­i­fied from the bid­ding process for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

In June, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts said it was un­eth­i­cal and un­fair for one of the bid­ders to meet with the Prime Min­is­ter while a ten­der was out. Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked if it was “the Venezue­lans” who put the Gov­ern­ment on to Jin­dal to get the re­fin­ery.

In his Labour Day ad­dress, the pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the OW­TU, An­cel Ro­get, said: “I want to say this af­ter­noon that the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union will not stand idly by and al­low any­body to walk in here and take over the re­fin­ery. So In­di­an busi­ness­man or not, who­ev­er you be, we must be a part of go­ing for­ward in the op­er­a­tion of that re­fin­ery.”

In the let­ter to Row­ley, Jin­dal who served as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment in his na­tive In­dia on three oc­ca­sions said: “I un­der­stand the vi­tal role con­struc­tive op­po­si­tion plays in a healthy democ­ra­cy, how­ev­er, in my re­spect­ful view the be­hav­iour ex­hib­it­ed by the Op­po­si­tion in this in­stance risks caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic and rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Such ac­tions will like­ly de­ter po­ten­tial in­vestors lead­ing to missed op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic growth and and job cre­ation and ul­ti­mate­ly dis­ad­van­tag­ing the peo­ple who will ben­e­fit from these in­vest­ments.”

Row­ley al­so re­spond­ed to econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran who said over the past 12 years more than $US25 bil­lion has gone miss­ing from this coun­try, mak­ing this na­tion the “world’s largest los­er of for­eign ex­change.” Dukha­ran was us­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s glob­al data­base for 2011-2022.

The PM ad­mit­ted that he on­ly had time to read the head­line and the first para­graph of the sto­ry in a dai­ly news­pa­per yes­ter­day but asked: “What kind of jack­ass­ness is that?”

He said he was con­cerned about the go-to peo­ple who pro­vide the nar­ra­tive in this coun­try.

“Where in God’s name is that mon­ey com­ing from to be lost?” Row­ley asked.


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