Ke­jan Haynes

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he finds it strange that the same peo­ple who con­tin­u­ous­ly chas­tise his Gov­ern­ment for not gen­er­at­ing enough di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment are now the ones who have a prob­lem with In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal ex­press­ing in­ter­est in the moth­balled Petrotrin re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

The PM made the com­ment while speak­ing to at­ten­dees of his $1,200-a-plate Break­fast with the Prime Min­is­ter at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

His state­ment seemed to be a di­rect re­sponse to the Op­po­si­tion and Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union chal­lenge of Gov­ern­ment en­gag­ing In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal, who has ex­pressed an in­ter­est in the Petrotrin re­fin­ery.

Row­ley said at this time, the ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery are just that but the Gov­ern­ment has not yet looked at the ex­pres­sions.

Dur­ing the PNM’s Sports and Fam­i­ly Day in San Fer­nan­do on Sun­day, Row­ley said Cab­i­net will soon form a com­mit­tee to eval­u­ate the pro­pos­als. The com­mit­tee will re­port to the coun­try at the end of Au­gust.

“But there seems to be an at­tempt to dis­suade for­eign­ers from in­vest­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Dr Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

“In­ter­est­ing­ly enough, it’s com­ing from the same peo­ple who would say from time to time there is not enough di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment. One of the fail­ures of the Gov­ern­ment is that we need more di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment. Are we not get­ting it? And lo and be­hold, we now have the po­ten­tial for for­eign in­vest­ment from a place where there are peo­ple who want to in­vest abroad and who are in­vest­ing abroad, and we are say­ing, well, if you’re in­vest­ing in Oman and Qatar and Dubai and stay­ing wher­ev­er you are, con­sid­er Trinidad and To­ba­go. And that seems to be up­set­ting some peo­ple.”

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­leged that Jin­dal is work­ing as a proxy for the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to re­fine its oil here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the claim at the UNC’s Mon­day Night Re­port, not­ing that if this is the case, the Gov­ern­ment would be tak­ing T&T down a dan­ger­ous path, as Venezuela is still un­der heavy US sanc­tions.

Row­ley di­rect­ly thanked T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to In­dia, Roger Gopaul, for his in­flu­ence in in­tro­duc­ing Jin­dal to the Gov­ern­ment.

He al­so thanked the hon­orary coun­cil in Ghana, whom he said has worked “very hard to­wards get­ting Ghana­ian pro­pos­als from Ghana­ian busi­ness” to look at the re­fin­ery.

Re­spond­ing in­di­rect­ly to ac­cu­sa­tions he over­stepped the pro­cure­ment process, the Prime Min­is­ter said there were pre­vi­ous pro­pos­als for the re­fin­ery, in­clud­ing that of the OW­TU’s Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny which were eval­u­at­ed but re­ject­ed.

“We had one lo­cal pro­pos­al which said to the Gov­ern­ment we are in­ter­est­ed, we want the re­fin­ery. But the way we go­ing to get the re­fin­ery is the Gov­ern­ment must give us 500 mil­lion US dol­lars of bonds that are trad­able, and we will use that to buy the re­fin­ery and to op­er­ate it,” Row­ley ex­plained.

“So you want tax­pay­ers to give you tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey that is trad­able bonds, which you could just con­vert in­to cash as you please, and use the tax­pay­er mon­ey to buy the tax­pay­er re­fin­ery for your ben­e­fit. That is the kind of fool­ish­ness that some peo­ple ad­vance to the Gov­ern­ment.”

Row­ley said an­oth­er pro­pos­al re­ceived re­quired the Gov­ern­ment to sign a con­tract to buy what­ev­er was pro­duced.

Row­ley said, “If those are the pro­pos­als, the an­swer could ob­vi­ous­ly on­ly be no thanks.”

The Prime Min­is­ter stressed the coun­try is po­si­tion­ing it­self as a place of pro­duc­tion and on­ward ac­cess to mar­kets in North Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca or South Amer­i­ca, to be able to grow out of a pos­si­ble de­clin­ing rev­enue stream in the hy­dro­car­bon sec­tor.