Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young says what is tak­ing place on the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, with very im­por­tant com­pa­nies run­ning from T&T, is go­ing to lead to se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties for the Gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue plans.

Young gave that warn­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo in yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) meet­ing. The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry was un­der ex­am­i­na­tion.

Young’s warn­ing came a day af­ter Pt Lisas-based fer­tilis­er gi­ant Nu­trien said it start­ed a con­trolled shut­down of its plant due to is­sues with the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion. This had jeop­ar­dised some 600 jobs. But yes­ter­day, a de­ci­sion was made by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, which brought a tem­po­rary re­prieve to Nu­trien.

In yes­ter­day’s SFC, Young not­ed that sig­nif­i­cant sums have been spent in re­funds to the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty re­gard­ing the wa­ter im­prove­ment rate, and he ques­tioned a $13.3 mil­lion re­duc­tion in re­funds.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said the de­crease Young re­ferred to is re­lat­ed to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate con­sump­tion.

“This has been pro­ject­ed at a low­er con­sump­tion based on his­tor­i­cal trends over the last three to four years in par­tic­u­lar. For ex­am­ple, the clo­sure of two com­pa­nies over the past three years has re­sult­ed in the re­duc­tion of con­sump­tion (at Pt Lisas) that we’re see­ing,” Padarath added.

Young said, “Based on what we’re see­ing tak­ing place right now on the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate and the run­ning from T&T of very im­por­tant com­pa­nies on that es­tate, this may be an­oth­er area of sav­ings on the WASA side, but it is go­ing to pro­vide se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties on the rev­enue side, so it’s some­thing to keep an eye on.”

Padarath, ques­tioned by MP for Arou­ca/Lopinot Mar­vin Gon­za­les, al­so said ar­rears owed to WASA by the Gov­ern­ment are in the vicin­i­ty of $69 mil­lion. He said for al­most the last four to five years, those ar­rears across the util­i­ties sec­tor had been car­ried over, and “that con­tin­ues be­ing the chal­lenge.”