Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The cur­rent Mid­dle East con­flict has not im­pact­ed on any of the arrange­ments or ex­pres­sions of in­ter­ests re­gard­ing Gov­ern­ment’s Blue­print In­vest­ment plan to date, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar

The PM gave the in­for­ma­tion in Par­lia­ment in re­sponse to Op­po­si­tion leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les’s query in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

The PM had al­so stat­ed that 373 peo­ple had so far been de­tained un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Beck­les asked how the cur­rent Mid­dle East con­flict has im­pact­ed the arrange­ments to source fi­nanc­ing from Gulf States - in­clud­ing the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates - for Gov­ern­ment’s Blue­print In­vest­ment plan.

A Gov­ern­ment team led by Works Min­is­ter Jear­lean John and UDE­COTT chair­man Shankar Bidaisee went to the UAE last year to seek in­vest­ment for the plan. Some 965 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est were lat­er re­ceived. Af­ter war erupt­ed on Feb­ru­ary 28 be­tween US/Is­raeli forces and Iran, neigh­bour­ing Gulf states, the UAE, Qatar and Sau­di Ara­bi suf­fered strikes by Iran.

On March 5, the Fi­nan­cial Times re­port­ed that fi­nan­cial strain caused by the war could see Gulf states re­view­ing their over­seas in­vest­ments and fu­ture com­mit­ments as they con­sid­er op­tions to ease pres­sure. The UAE, Kuwait, Sau­di Ara­bia and Qatar had joint­ly dis­cussed the strain on their bud­gets and economies. A Gulf of­fi­cial pro­ject­ed it could im­pact “any­thing from in­vest­ment pledges to for­eign states or com­pa­nies, sports spon­sor­ships, con­tracts with busi­ness­es and in­vestors, or sales of hold­ings.”

On Fri­day, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar, not­ing the 965 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est re­ceived for Gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment pro­gramme, said the plan has had “a tremen­dous im­pact.”

“I was told by the Works Min­is­ter that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is that the Mid­dle East con­flict has not im­pact­ed any of the arrange­ments or ex­pres­sions of in­ter­ests re­gard­ing Gov­ern­ment’s Blue­print plan to date,” the PM added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so asked about in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports of a sharp in­crease in fer­tilis­er prices due to the Mid­dle East con­flict and what was Gov­ern­ment’s plan to in­su­late the lo­cal farm­ing in­dus­try and do­mes­tic food prices. She said the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter is cur­rent­ly mon­i­tor­ing the on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion and work­ing to­geth­er with the lo­cal farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty and all stake­hodlers to mit­i­gate any price in­creas­es.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so told PNM MP Do­minic Ro­maine that the cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture for the dig­i­tal Ar­rival/De­par­ture plat­form is ro­bust enough to pro­tect sen­si­tive pas­sen­ger da­ta from breach­es.

On oth­er Op­po­si­tion queries, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael Dowlath told PNM’s Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was con­tact­ed fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of 400 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion at the Ves­signy Sec­ondary school and the items were re­moved.

“The min­istry con­tin­ues work­ing close­ly with the po­lice as in­ves­ti­ga­tions pro­ceed. Ini­tial as­sess­ment in­di­cat­ed no im­me­di­ate threat to the safe­ty of stu­dents or staff and teach­ing/learn­ing ac­tiv­i­ties were not dis­rupt­ed,” Dowlath added.

On an­oth­er query, Dowlath said the Ari­ma Boys’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School ex­pe­ri­enced an in­ter­rup­tion to its potable wa­ter sup­ply due to a mal­func­tion in the school’s wa­ter pump sys­tem. One pump re­quires re­place­ment and an­oth­er re­quires re­pair and arrange­ments have been made to un­der­take the nec­es­sary re­pairs, he said.

Dowlath said the re­quired works will be car­ried out to­day (Mon­day) and the school is ex­pect­ed to re­open to­mor­row once the potable wa­ter sup­ply has been re­stored.

“In the in­ter­im, the min­istry has en­sured that all nec­es­sary arrange­ments are in place to fa­cil­i­tate stu­dents prepar­ing for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA), so there’s no dis­rup­tion to their prepa­ra­tion or ex­am­i­na­tion arrange­ments,” Dowlath added.