Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s deal with a Chi­nese firm once black­list­ed by the World Bank for bribery and fraud al­le­ga­tions.

The com­pa­ny, Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Co Ltd (CHEC), has been re­tained by the Gov­ern­ment for the dry­dock­ing fa­cil­i­ty planned for La Brea. How­ev­er, while CHEC has been of­fered 30 per cent eq­ui­ty in the new fa­cil­i­ty, it is still un­clear how much the project will cost the coun­try.

The com­pa­ny has been the sub­ject of neg­a­tive re­ports com­ing out of West Africa, Guinea, Bangladesh and, clos­er to home, in the Cay­man Is­lands. All the re­ports high­light bribery, fraud or cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against CHEC.

Back in June, the New York Times re­port­ed that the out­go­ing Sri Lankan gov­ern­ment had signed a bil­lion-dol­lar deal with the com­pa­ny. But the in­com­ing gov­ern­ment strug­gled to make pay­ments on those debts and was forced to hand over its new port as well as 15,000 acres of land sur­round­ing it.

But Row­ley is not con­cerned that the same thing will hap­pen with the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s arrange­ment.

“How many peo­ple do you know or have heard about who had to hand over their house or car to a bank or cred­it union?” he asked.

“Does that mean that no one should ever en­ter in­to a loan arrange­ment for a house or car? Cir­cum­stances and arrange­ments dif­fer as they ex­ist or are made.

“That is why we as­sessed our own unique at­trib­ut­es and, ad­di­tion­al­ly, we got the Chi­nese to not just be a hired con­trac­tor to the project, but we ne­go­ti­at­ed them in­to the project as eq­ui­ty hold­ers so they share the risk and have an in­cen­tive to bring busi­ness to the fa­cil­i­ty from the huge in­ter­na­tion­al Chi­nese mer­chant ma­rine and oth­er users.”

He said on his vis­it to Chi­na last year he met with the Pres­i­dent and Pre­mier “and asked them to en­cour­age Chi­nese com­pa­nies to not just be con­trac­tors but to make di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment in the econ­o­my of T&T to bring growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion which is what we are af­ter.

“They both agreed that they will sup­port T&T na­tion­al pol­i­cy and would en­cour­age their com­pa­nies to in­vest ‘in projects which make eco­nom­ic sense,’” Row­ley said.

Row­ley said the “ground­break­ing” La Brea project, which he has promised will pro­vide 5,000 jobs, is on­ly the first of these type of arrange­ments with for­eign gov­ern­ments.

Asked how much the deal will cost, the PM said, “We are cur­rent­ly work­ing to­wards that.”

Back in 2014, the then Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) signed a sim­i­lar deal with the same com­pa­ny for the de­vel­op­ment of an eco­nom­ic zone, a trans­ship­ment port and dry­dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties. That agree­ment was pegged at $500 mil­lion and was signed by for­mer trade and in­dus­try min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath.

Con­tact­ed via text mes­sage on the UNC’s arrange­ment back then, Bharath said, “I don’t know the de­tails (of the cur­rent deal) but, in essence, it looks the same dry­dock­ing and trans­ship­ment fa­cil­i­ties. Fund­ing was al­ready ap­proved at two per cent with a five-year mora­to­ri­um for re­pay­ment and de­signs have al­ready been done and ap­proved.”

But Row­ley’s arrange­ment has one key dif­fer­ence: the CHEC will hold 30 per cent share in the fa­cil­i­ty.

“So the UNC signed that deal? So it was a state se­cret? So the Chi­nese had eq­ui­ty in their deal?” Row­ley asked, re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the sim­i­lar­i­ties in both arrange­ments.

Row­ley added if the deal was the same as the UNC’s then there should be no ques­tions about the cost.

“Since they al­ready signed the deal, they should be able to give you a fig­ure,” he said.

How­ev­er, he con­firmed that no cost has yet been de­ter­mined on this project.

While there is lim­it­ed avail­able in­for­ma­tion on the new deal, the old 2014 deal promised de­liv­ery in 36 months af­ter sign­ing. It in­clud­ed con­struc­tion of a large con­tain­er and a bulk trans­fer ter­mi­nal; deep­wa­ter chan­nel ex­ca­va­tion, basin dredg­ing, off­shore recla­ma­tion and ter­mi­nal land con­struc­tion; large dry dock con­struc­tion and an out­fit­ting ter­mi­nal for ship­build­ing and re­pair­ing.