PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment will not al­low the gas sit­u­a­tion to be­come worse.

This was the word from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day as gave as­sur­ances that the de­ci­sion to pri­va­tise Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um gas sta­tions will not lead to a mo­nop­oly.

“It will be very trans­par­ent and it will be very open. And if course we will not, noth­ing is re­served for any­body. Con­glom­er­ate or soli­taire. The sit­u­a­tion is that we will en­sure that there is trans­paren­cy in what we do. Noth­ing is re­served for any­body,” Row­ley said fol­low­ing the open­ing of the new Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tre in Di­a­mond Vale.

Dur­ing Mon­day’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert an­nounced the lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of the fu­el sec­tor as well as the in­tend­ed sale of all NP gas sta­tions, with op­er­a­tors to be giv­en first pref­er­ence.

How­ev­er, this has brought fear of a mo­nop­oly among pri­vate en­ti­ties and in­creased costs at the pumps as a re­sult for the pub­lic. But Row­ley tried to al­lay those fears.

“Of course, the Gov­ern­ment will have to en­sure that what­ev­er we cre­ate does not wors­en our sit­u­a­tion or give any un­due ad­van­tage or cre­ate any dis­ad­van­tage,” he said in re­sponse to ques­tions of a po­ten­tial mo­nop­oly emerg­ing.

He al­so down­played the pos­si­bil­i­ty of run­away prices ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the wider pub­lic, as he said it placed a lev­el of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on the con­sumer to man­age the mar­ket as he re­mind­ed that Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um nev­er con­trolled the fu­el prices.

“That was nev­er NP’s role, fu­el prices were a cab­i­net de­ci­sion. It will be more of a mar­ket sit­u­a­tion be­cause of com­pe­ti­tion in the mar­ket, the con­sumer will now play a big­ger role,” he said.

“If the peo­ple who are now go­ing to get in­volved in own­ing gas sta­tions and they are com­pet­ing, you wouldn’t go to a gas sta­tion where the price is high­er would you?

“And by the same to­ken, if the price of oil goes up and takes the price of fu­el up with it, you wouldn’t run up and down with your car be­cause you feel to dri­ve? You would make a de­ci­sion as to when you trav­el, how many peo­ple you car­ry if you have fam­i­ly, how of­ten you trav­el, how much fu­el you burn, so you now have the lever in your hand to de­ter­mine how you in­flu­ence your fu­el ex­pense.”

Row­ley al­so re­spond­ed to com­plaints from used car deal­ers, who ex­pect their mar­ket to col­lapse amid the re­moval of tax con­ces­sions for the im­port­ed ve­hi­cles and the re­duc­tion of the im­por­ta­tion of the age of used cars to three years. He ex­plained that the im­por­ta­tion of cars was not a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty at this time.

“I would sim­ply say to the peo­ple in the car busi­ness, used car, un­used car and what­ev­er, if I have a choice to make be­tween en­sur­ing we have for­eign ex­change to buy med­i­cine for the hos­pi­tal, I would re­strict the ex­pen­di­ture on mo­tor­cars. Be­cause one thing this coun­try is not short of is mo­tor­cars, but we can­not be short of med­i­cine for the hos­pi­tal. And that is my an­swer,” Row­ley said.

In fact, he re­vealed that con­sid­er­a­tion was made to com­plete­ly ban the im­por­ta­tion of cars.

“You know there are some coun­tries in sit­u­a­tions like this where all they did was ban the im­por­ta­tion of cars. Case closed,” he said.

“We didn’t do that. But yet that was an op­tion that we had you know. And I must tell you we con­sid­ered it you know. It was con­sid­ered. But we said we will take the next op­tion, which is to re­strict the im­por­ta­tion.”

Row­ley al­so ex­plained the rea­son­ing be­hind the de­ci­sion to pri­va­tise the Port of Port-of-Spain, which he said would raise the lev­el of the port. (See ed­i­to­r­i­al on Page A12)

“At this point in time, the op­tion that is best for us is to get it in­to a sit­u­a­tion where the Port of Trinidad and To­ba­go could be a recog­nised port by those who use the world’s trans­porta­tion ser­vice,” he said.

“We are re­ceiv­ing the out­come of our decades of man­age­ment. Get­ting weak­er and weak­er and weak­er and weak­er in port busi­ness. What for­eign in­vest­ment would do, or even lo­cal in­vest­ment for that mat­ter, if we get it out of the pub­lic ser­vice in­to the hands of pri­vate sec­tor.

“They au­to­mat­i­cal­ly will put the port in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive. The in­vest­ment that they will make to up­grade the port and so on, they will fo­cus not just be­ing the Port in Port-of-Spain for col­lo­qui­al busi­ness and rea­sons but see it in the con­text of in­ter­na­tion­al trans­porta­tion.”