KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of try­ing to de­ter in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors from this coun­try. Re­spond­ing to the back­lash re­ceived from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) who called for In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd to be dis­qual­i­fied from the bid­ding process for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, Dr Row­ley said do­ing so will not on­ly dis­cour­age Jin­dal but al­so oth­er busi­ness­es from want­i­ng to in­vest in the coun­try.

Row­ley said, “It would be a very bad thing if we are con­stant­ly try­ing to at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment in­to this coun­try, but there are peo­ple in the po­lit­i­cal are­na claim­ing to want to be the next gov­ern­ment, and all they could do is threat­en any in­vestor who may want to in­vest here, as to what they would do and what they won’t do when they get in­to gov­ern­ment. Be­cause if I were an in­vestor, and that was the en­vi­ron­ment, I don’t think I would be as at­tract­ed to it as I would nor­mal­ly be.

“What we have in Trinidad and To­ba­go, you don’t have in the oth­er coun­tries. In oth­er coun­tries, you don’t have an op­po­si­tion that’s chas­ing for­eign in­vest­ment … If you have peo­ple in your coun­try whose job it is to chase away peo­ple who come to in­vest in your coun­try, you have to ask your­self in whose in­ter­est are they act­ing? In their own in­ter­est be­cause they be­lieve by do­ing that, they will win an elec­tion.

“That at­tack on a po­ten­tial in­vestor is not on­ly neg­a­tive for that in­vestor; you’re cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment of hos­til­i­ty.” 

He said that the neg­a­tive ef­fect has pos­si­bly al­ready kicked in, as he’s aware that an­oth­er po­ten­tial in­vestor who pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed in­ter­est in T&T is now ques­tion­ing the po­lit­i­cal con­flict with­in the coun­try fol­low­ing at­tacks on Jin­dal.

Asked if Jin­dal’s cor­rup­tion charges are of any con­cern to him, he replied, “Of course, it is a con­cern, but you have to de­ter­mine what you’re deal­ing with. Is it an in­di­vid­ual you’re deal­ing with or a com­pa­ny? Be­cause very many com­pa­nies around the world have had is­sues.”

While the re­fin­ery has not yet been sold, Dr Row­ley said all in­ter­est­ed peo­ple have un­til Ju­ly 31 to sub­mit their pro­pos­als; this in­cludes Jin­dal, but he could not con­firm whether or not he was still in­ter­est­ed in the re­fin­ery fol­low­ing the back­lash.

The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) has al­so re­ject­ed the idea of sell­ing the re­fin­ery. Ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion about Petrotrin, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said the union will stage “burn­ings” across the coun­try and called for a na­tion­al de­bate against Dr Row­ley on the re­fin­ery.

Dr Row­ley said that would not solve the prob­lem.

“With re­spect to the re­fin­ery, the prob­lem is that we have a re­fin­ery that we have had to close be­cause of the rea­sons giv­en. The peo­ple who are talk­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in the po­lit­i­cal are­na, about this re­fin­ery, many of them know that what they’re talk­ing about don’t make no sense. But it’s ei­ther that is how they spend their day or they be­lieve that by ex­tract­ing sen­ti­ments and emo­tions out of it, it will ben­e­fit them. The Gov­ern­ment can’t spend its time and ef­fort en­gaged in that.”