A House for Mr Rowley and…

 

To­ba­go was al­lo­cat­ed $2.283B in the 2020 Budget This in­clud­ed $2.033B for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, $231.6M for cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture and $18M for the URP.

The $18 million two-storey Tobago residence for the prime minister on the Atlantic oceanfront boasts a prayer room, four bedrooms, conference facilities, swimming pool, lounge, guest accommodation and tennis courts. The old official home required repairs costing $2 million.

Tobago was originally named “Magdalena” for a ship of Columbus’

On the way to Blenheim from Crown Point airport, the state-owned 5-star de luxe Magdalena Grand Beach & Golf Resort basks in prime real estate of 750 acres beside the Atlantic Ocean. Surrounded by the 18- hole PGA designed championship golf course of the tropical Tobago Plantations Estate, the gated community of 200 seafront suites and villas, Dive Center, Spa, banquet halls and meeting rooms sprawls along two and a half miles of golden coast, with nature trails and canopy walks through virgin mangrove forest.

There are over 150 other luxury hotels on the tourist island.

… A House for Miss Weekes

It’s a national disgrace’ Fish­er­man and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) slammed the gov­ern­ment for squander­ing $89 mil­lion on Pres­i­dent’s House while al­lo­cat­ing a meagre sum of $2 mil­lion was for flood re­lief.

“To read that the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T has now spent $89 mil­lion to ren­o­vate an al­ready built and fre­quent­ly well main­tained Pres­i­dent’s house is sim­ply an in­sult to our na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence and in­tegri­ty and a slap in the face of all of our suf­fer­ing flood vic­tims. There is no dis­pute ….that we need to boost our na­tion­al pride, but with so much suf­fer­ing and pover­ty shouldn’t leg­isla­tive lead­ers be more ac­tive­ly en­gaged in en­sur­ing val­ue for mon­ey…? It is deeply dis­turb­ing that a mere pit­tance of two mil­lion dol­lars has been al­lo­cat­ed for flood re­lief ef­forts by this Prime Min­is­ter while cham­pagne toasts are cel­e­brat­ed on $89 mil­lion shame­less­ly spent on re­pairs to the roof of an al­ready built, well main­tained and lav­ish­ly fur­nished Pres­i­dent’s Res­i­dence. “

Based on costs by pro­fes­sion­al quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ors, three brand new ‘mon­u­ments to boost na­tion­al pride’ or Pres­i­den­tial res­i­dences could have been built and fur­nished for the same $89 mil­lion. “Does PM Row­ley care to un­der­stand the dis­as­ter that faces thou­sands of flood vic­tims an­nu­al­ly as a re­sult of the Gov­ern­ment’s poor ur­ban plan­ning, mis­man­age­ment, ne­glect and/or in­abil­i­ty to main­tain in­fra­struc­ture? Does PM Row­ley not un­der­stand that he was elect­ed with the core re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that all cit­i­zens are ad­e­quate­ly pro­tect­ed?”

The Prime Min­is­ter has a du­ty of care, yet he was fail­ing to pro­tect and safe-guard cit­i­zens while on the oth­er hand, he is cel­e­brat­ing what ap­pears to be a typ­i­cal­ly and ex­ces­sive­ly in­flat­ed $89 mil­lion ren­o­va­tion cost.” T&T will con­tin­ue to suf­fer na­tion­al shame and dis­grace un­til there were lead­ers who can lead our na­tion with a sense of so­cial jus­tice and pub­lic con­science.

“We are doomed un­til we can en­sure that the boom to bust squan­der­ma­nia is halt­ed as a mat­ter of na­tion­al emer­gency or else we will right­ful­ly con­tin­ue to be brand­ed as a failed state Ba­nana Re­pub­lic, pol­lut­ed with an in­sen­si­tive lead­er­ship who are paving the way for the scourge of gross mis­man­age­ment of the pub­lic purse.”

With 300,000 homeless and thousands more reeling from floods, on 21 December 2019, the regime celebrated Christmas in a House for Mr Rowley .

Paria arranges one-month credit for foreign fuel

Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny se­cured a one-month cred­it grace pe­ri­od to pay its in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers for fu­el.

This new arrange­ment came on stream a month ago, giv­ing the lo­cal whole­sale com­pa­ny a lit­tle more wig­gle room to pay it’s own in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­er.

The trader, in op­er­a­tion on­ly since De­cem­ber 2018, was un­able to se­cure any long term cred­it fa­cil­i­ty with its own in­ter­na­tion­al fu­el sup­pli­er and is fight­ing to main­tain a del­i­cate bal­ance of im­port and dis­tri­b­u­tion of fu­el to the coun­try.

How­ev­er, that cred­it fa­cil­i­ty can­not be ex­tend­ed to Paria’s two clients— NP and Unipet.

The one-year old Paria must be paid on time or the en­tire coun­try will be out of fu­el.

Paria and the pri­vate­ly owned Unipet disagreed and Paria stopped sup­plying Unipet.
Though Unipet has on­ly 30 per­cent of the fu­el sup­ply mar­ket, the shut­down of its 24 sta­tions led to long lines at NP sta­tions, lengthy de­lays and pan­ic buys.

After a hasty meet­ing a mul­ti-mil­lion pay­ment re­stored sup­ply un­til Jan­u­ary 2020 but very lit­tle in­for­ma­tion.

Paria is the on­ly com­pa­ny with a li­cense to im­port and dis­trib­ute fu­el to the two fu­elling com­pa­nies: Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) and the pri­vate­ly-owned Unipet.

The en­tire gas sup­ply sit­u­a­tion is ten­u­ous and leaves the State com­pa­ny in a del­i­cate bal­anc­ing sit­u­a­tion, need­ing pay­ment ear­ly in or­der to pay it’s own sup­pli­er.

The lack of read­i­ly avail­able for­eign ex­change is adding to Paria’s strug­gle to main­tain that bal­ance be­tween buy­ing and sup­ply­ing.

Paria sought to change its ex­ist­ing agree­ment with Unipet, in­sist­ing that 10 per­cent of Unipet’s pay­ment to Paria be made in US cur­ren­cy.

Ac­cord­ing to sources in­side Paria, with­out that for­eign cur­ren­cy, Paria is hard pressed to keep find­ing the US to pay the in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­er.

Paria does not have the same arrange­ment with NP.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­vealed that Unipet owed Paria over $100 mil­lion in un­paid bills.

The State owed Paria $134 mil­lion in VAT re­funds and gas sub­sidy re­pay­ments.

State-owned debt to Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd reached $350 mil­lion at one point and dips to $150 mil­lion af­ter pay­ments are made.

How­ev­er the size of NP’s debt is still a cause for con­cern at Paria.

The NP is held to a week­ly pay­ment sched­ule with Paria but in­sists on a stricter pay­ment sched­ule with it’s own buy­ers.

NP has rules for pay­ment. If a cheque has an er­ror or has to be re­turned for any rea­son, NP charges its cus­tomer $500 for the in­con­ve­nience and that com­pa­ny can on­ly pay by cer­ti­fied cheque for the fol­low­ing six months.

Unipet is not alone in this struggle. 117 in­de­pen­dent pe­tro­le­um deal­ers (T&T Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion) who op­er­ate gas sta­tions with the NP la­bel face these dif­fi­cul­ties and pay for their gas on de­liv­ery or in ad­vance. The cen­tral is­sue is wider than the im­passe with Unipet. It in­volves the busi­ness re­la­tion­ship be­tween state mo­nop­oly pow­er and the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the pri­vate sec­tor op­er­a­tors

NGC as ag­gre­ga­tor sus­pend­ed the sup­ply of gas feed­stock to CNC last year be­cause they could not agree on a price. Con­trac­tors face the same is­sues. Many busi­ness­es small and large will ver­i­fy that the State can­not be de­pend­ed on to meet its oblig­a­tions in a time­ly fash­ion. Ask those wait­ing on VAT re­funds of $5 bil­lion plus! You can play hard­ball when you have a mo­nop­oly. My way or the high­way!

Fu­el prices are con­trolled by the State at the pump. Paria Trad­ing and NP are both whol­ly-owned and con­trolled by the State. In­deed, NP, not the En­er­gy Min­istry, is the de fac­to reg­u­la­tor. The nar­row is­sue is the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the gas sta­tion op­er­a­tors and the mar­gins on which they must live whilst ef­fect­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. The is­sue is not new and has been the sub­ject of on­go­ing dis­cus­sion over sev­er­al years and many ad­min­is­tra­tions. In­deed, the deal­er mar­gins have dropped from a high of 20 per cent in the ear­ly years to 4.5 per cent to­day.

The im­me­di­ate dif­fi­cul­ty has been ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the in­crease in the Busi­ness and the Green Fund Levies (which are cal­cu­lat­ed on the gross sales of petrol ie, the re­tail price) which amount to one per cent and the in­crease in the min­i­mum wage. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in­creased use of plas­tic as a pay­ment method car­ries a bank charge 1.5% of the gross sale and NP charges five cents for rent on the sale of every litre of fu­el. That leaves lit­tle to pay ex­pens­es.

Unipet seeks license to import fuel

The Gas dilemma simmers as Unipet wants its own fu­el im­por­ta­tion li­cense, so it can by-pass the State-run Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.
In a 38-page signed af­fi­davit , Unipet’, de­tailed the rea­sons for the re­quest.

Ri­ley said that if sup­ply was not re­stored by De­cem­ber 6, Unipet would suf­fer “ir­repara­ble harm” which would im­pact some 600 em­ploy­ees.

To date, all 24 Unipet fill­ing sta­tions re­mained closed and with­out sup­ply.

Unipet ser­viced 30 per cent of the mar­ket, while NP ser­viced the oth­er 70 per cent, how­ev­er with the re­quest­ed dead­line date al­ready passed, it means that the 24 Unipet sta­tions will re­main closed un­til the promised in­ter­ven­tion by act­ing Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Colm Im­bert.

Un­til that in­ter­ven­tion, the mo­tor­ing pub­lic should brace for shut­tered Unipet sta­tions and longer lines at the NP ser­vice sta­tions.

On­ly when Petrotrin closed down in 2018, did the Gov­ern­ment pay off the out­stand­ing “hun­dreds of mil­lions” owed to Unipet.

“A so­lu­tion to this dilem­ma can be for Unipet to have a li­cence from the min­is­ter to im­port fu­el for the pub­lic good in times when Paria can­not in­ten­tion­al­ly or un­in­ten­tion­al­ly sup­ply.”

Paria gives pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um, an­oth­er com­pa­ny owned by the State and Unipet’s on­ly com­peti­tor.

Unipet has com­mer­cial cus­tomers in en­er­gy ex­plo­ration and it can­not sup­ply to them be­cause it does not have a bunker­ing li­cence. NP has one. When Unipet ap­plied for one, they were told that the Min­istry of En­er­gy was not is­su­ing bunker­ing li­cences.

NP there­fore has the com­pet­i­tive edge.

De­spite NP’s sub­stan­tial in­debt­ed­ness, sup­ply has nev­er been ter­mi­nat­ed. More­over NP is in re­ceipt of sub­stan­tial Grant’s from the Gov­ern­ment.

Paria op­er­ates a mo­nop­oly over the sale and dis­tri­b­u­tion of fu­el and there­fore had the ca­pac­i­ty to af­fect all con­sumers in T&T.

Paria charges Unipet some $2,000 per hour in over­time when­ev­er Unipet has to re­ceive fu­el out­side of work­ing hours.

Paria on­ly op­er­ates dur­ing “nor­mal work­ing hours” which are al­so the “in­ef­fi­cient op­er­at­ing hours of the gantry”.

Paria changed the com­pa­ny’s cred­it terms in May 2019 and in­stead of pay­ment due on the 25th if every month, it was now due on the 10th day of every month and all cred­it was ex­pect­ed to be paid up, in­clud­ing the sub­sidy pay­ment, which would lat­er be paid back to Unipet.

Unipet is al­so cit­ing a Gov­ern­ment im­posed 200 per cent in­crease in tax­a­tion which “re­sult­ed in the near col­lapse of the pe­tro­le­um mar­ket in or around 2016”.

NP and Unipet suf­fered loss­es af­ter that in­crease in tax­es, but NP has Gov­ern­men­tal sup­port and fi­nanc­ing.

Unipet is al­so bound by an agree­ment to on­ly pur­chase liq­uid pe­tro­le­um fu­els from the re­fin­ery “or oth­er en­ti­ty ap­proved by the min­is­ter”.

The sole en­ti­ty this far ap­proved by the Min­is­ter is Paria.

Unipet’s 24 fill­ing sta­tions have been run­ning out of fu­el and all sta­tions were shut down.

Unipet al­so sup­plies com­mer­cial en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

Many of Unipet’s com­mer­cial cus­tomers want a guar­an­tee that Unipet will he able sup­ply prod­uct, it has been un­able to bid for con­tracts as it is un­able to pro­vide this guar­an­tee.”

Unipet has been forced to de­lay pay­ments to Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny be­cause of the “per­sis­tent de­lays” by the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in pay­ing the gas sub­sidy.

It was un­fair to ex­pect Unipet to look for a loan to pay off the mil­lions owed to Paria, es­pe­cial­ly as the State has “ha­bit­u­al­ly failed” to pay its sub­sidy on time.

Un­der Petrotrin and now un­der Paria, the pri­vate com­pa­ny nev­er re­ceived its sub­sidy pay­ment on time.

It be­came de­pen­dent on the pay­ment of the sub­sidy to pay for Pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts.

Paria is not dis­put­ing the mil­lions owed to Unipet by the State, but says “that has noth­ing to do with Paria.”

Unipet must pay for prod­ucts re­ceived.

The mea­sure­ment sys­tems at Paria’s sup­ply base are out­dat­ed and do not take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion evap­o­ra­tion all of which add to the ero­sion of prod­uct and there­fore mar­gins. Op­er­a­tional costs have al­so in­creased in the nor­mal course of busi­ness due to the need for se­cu­ri­ty. Both Unipet, NP and in­de­pen­dent op­er­a­tors are op­er­at­ing at a loss as ev­i­denced by their pub­lished fi­nan­cials. All of which af­fects cash flow and the abil­i­ty to pay. An Ex­press ed­i­to­r­i­al won­dered whether NP pays its bills to Paria and does so on time.

Scep­tics ar­gued that deal­ers would have ex­it­ed the mar­ket if they were los­ing mon­ey. Eas­i­er said than done, as gas sta­tions tend to be fam­i­ly prop­er­ties that have on­ly been used as gas sta­tions. Re­me­di­at­ing the sta­tion to al­ter­na­tive use in ac­cor­dance with EMA reg­u­la­tions costs more than the re­al es­tate val­ue. No one wants to lose cap­i­tal. They have tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly to get the mat­ter ad­dressed,, for years.

These com­plaints have been on­go­ing, and the im­passe was an­tic­i­pat­ed by Unipet who com­mis­sioned a study in 2016 which demon­strat­ed that the sit­u­a­tion was un­ten­able. No one lis­tened. No busi­ness can sur­vive in­def­i­nite­ly if it is los­ing mon­ey. Every­one ex­pects that debts should be paid on time by all eco­nom­ic ac­tors. . The Gov­ern­ment’s nar­ra­tive led by the prime min­is­ter is aimed at de­mon­is­ing Unipet whom he ac­cused of a “sense of en­ti­tle­ment” in Par­lia­ment . This re­sponse is pop­ulist and dan­ger­ous. Nei­ther Unipet nor the pe­tro­le­um deal­ers are un­rea­son­able peo­ple who do not want to pay what they owe.

Busi­ness arrange­ments must be vi­able to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity. If the Gov­ern­ment can­not get the re­tail dis­tri­b­u­tion of fu­el right, will the more dif­fi­cult strate­gic en­er­gy is­sues be ad­dressed ad­e­quate­ly? There is no pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem and com­muters do not need an ad­di­tion­al headache. This is a busi­ness prob­lem re­quir­ing a sen­si­ble busi­ness so­lu­tion. The Gov­ern­ment can­not re­spond in a spon­ta­neous and ad hoc man­ner to what is a long-term pol­i­cy is­sue of its own mak­ing.

Petroleum Dealers As­so­ci­a­tion warn of Paria repercussion

Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers say the de­ci­sion by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing to dis­con­tin­ue sup­ply­ing UNIPET with fu­el, will have far-reach­ing con­se­quences for the public.

Paria Fu­el Trad­ing in­di­cat­ed its in­ten­tion to stop sup­ply­ing UNIPET with fu­el be­cause of out­stand­ing ar­rears and fail­ure to com­plete ne­go­ti­a­tions for a new dis­tri­b­u­tion deal.

Saleema Sat­tar of PDA notes that Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) post­ed loss­es, like UNIPET

which lacks the cush­ion of tax pay­ers subsidy from the state and if NP was in ar­rears to whether Paria would have made a sim­i­lar move, which af­fects a third of the mo­tor­ing pop­u­la­tion.

NP op­er­ates 115 sta­tions in the net­work; UNIPET op­er­ates about 25 with a mar­ket share of about 30 per­cent Of one mil­lion ve­hi­cles on the road, 300,000 are served by UNIPET.

PDA pres­i­dent, Robin Narayans­ingh said there was no in­di­ca­tion that Paria would take such a de­ci­sion and UNIPET deal­ers are in shock. The lat­est de­vel­op­ment has fur­ther thrown an in­dus­try plagued with se­ri­ous in­sta­bil­i­ty in­to a tail­spin.

“These UNIPET deal­ers have in­vest­ed their prop­er­ty, their land, their mon­ey and their on­ly sup­ply is from UNIPET, their whole­salers. So how are they go­ing to ex­ist? How are they go­ing to pay their mort­gages? This shut­down will im­pact, di­rect­ly, 600 work­ers.”

With con­cern rising that sev­ering ties with UNIPET could lead to a fu­el short­age, Paria as­sured mo­tor­ists that NP will pick up the slack.

Minister intervenes

Act­ing En­er­gy Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­ter­ven­ed in ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and Unipet to bro­ker a speedy agree­ment.

Unipet owed Paria over $100 mil­lion for fu­el sup­plied with­out a writ­ten agree­ment. Re­ply­ing to queries on the im­passe af­ter Paria dis­con­tin­ued fu­el sup­ply­ to Unipet, Im­bert told the Sen­ate “NP has the ca­pac­i­ty to sup­ply fu­el but I in­tend to in­ter­vene .. get this mat­ter re­solved in the short­est pos­si­ble time and… pro­duce a prop­er agree­ment be­tween Paria and Unipet…”

Paria stat­ed this re­sult­ed from Paria’s fail­ure to rene­go­ti­ate a sup­ply agree­ment since April and that Unipet de­fault­ed on pay­ments owed from Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber de­liv­er­ies. Unipet ac­cused Paria to be “push­ing the mar­ket to­ward a mo­nop­oly sit­u­a­tion.”

Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Robin Narayns­ingh who said Paria’s move was “un­fair and un­just” urged Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene. He warned of threats to jobs as mo­torists com­plained of fu­el prob­lems.
This is an is­sue of non-pay­ment for sup­ply.. of non-sig­na­to­ry of an agree­ment which has been in force for sev­er­al months.

“As act­ing En­er­gy Min­is­ter it’s my in­ten­tion to in­ter­vene. How­ev­er, we have to en­sure that any­body sup­plied with fu­el that is paid for by tax­pay­ers, pays their bills and pays them on time.”

Paria, the whole­sale sup­pli­er of mo­tor­ing fu­els and Unipet were in ne­go­ti­a­tions. “And it’s ex­pect­ed the im­passe will be of short du­ra­tion min­imis­ing any dis­rup­tion to the mo­tor­ing pub­lic.”

There was no break­down of ne­go­ti­a­tions. “When Paria was formed last year three was a short term writ­ten con­tract put in place with Unipet. That ex­pired in March. Since then – April, May, June, Ju­ly, Au­gust, Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber, the arrange­ment be­tween Paria and Unipet has been by way of a month­ly arrange­ment ex­e­cut­ed via let­ter on the same terms and pre­vi­ous arrange­ment – re­gard­ing cred­it and so on – signed be­tween both sides.Be­tween April and Oc­to­ber Unipet signed the let­ter and ad­hered to the cred­it terms for the sup­ply of fu­el which are, in the first in­stance, 45 days and then it goes to 55 days from the first sup­ply of fu­el,”

“In No­vem­ber, Paria sent the usu­al month­ly let­ter to Unipet for its sig­na­ture, Unipet de­clined to sign the let­ter and Unipet was giv­en fu­el in good faith by Paria. Unipet de­clined to pay for fu­el and it owed Paria $172 mil­lion as of a cou­ple weeks ago. Paria and Unipet met and Unipet agreed to make a part pay­ment of $68 mil­lion, how­ev­er, it on­ly paid $64 mil­lion and it has still de­clined to sign any writ­ten agree­ment with Paria and it now owes Paria in ex­cess of $100 mil­lion for fu­el sup­plied with­out any writ­ten agree­ment.”

” NP present­ly has a net­work of 117 op­er­at­ing ser­vice sta­tions which are strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed through­out the length and breadth of T&T. Unipet has 24 op­er­at­ing ser­vice sta­tions which are pri­mar­i­ly lo­cat­ed in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas al­so served by NP ser­vice sta­tions… NP has the ex­ist­ing ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty to meet the fu­el re­quire­ments of the mo­tor­ing pub­lic and ad­di­tion­al re­sources have been put in place in terms of the sup­ply and de­liv­ery of fu­el at NP ser­vice sta­tions to deal with any is­sues that arise.”

The Sen­ate Pres­i­dent prevented de­bat­e as a mat­ter of ur­gent na­tion­al im­por­tance. Unipet had sev­er­al ser­vice sta­tions and was an al­ter­na­tive source of fu­el and po­ten­tial clo­sure would be a sig­nif­i­cant in­con­ve­nience to mo­torists and the pub­lic – in­clud­ing cre­at­ing a mo­nop­oly and job­less­ness.

State owes Unipet $134 million

Gov­ern­ment owes Unipet over $100 mil­lion in un­paid VAT re­funds and gas sub­si­dies.

This out­stand­ing bill is the crux of Unipet’s le­gal case against the State which racked up debt of

of $74.4 mil­lion in gas sub­si­dies and $59.2 mil­lion in VAT (Val­ue Added Tax) re­funds—a to­tal of $133.6 mil­lion.

Thist kept the “good faith” agree­ment and con­tin­ued de­liv­ery of fu­el go­ing be­tween Paria and Unipet.

Un­der the sub­si­dies, Paria sells to NP and Unipet fu­el at a price. If this is $100 NP and Unipet can on­ly sell to cus­tomers for $80 be­cause of price con­trol on fu­el. Gov­ern­ment then pays Unipet and NP the dif­fer­ence of $20, the sub­sidy. Be­cause of the line of cred­it, it is as­sumed that by the time NP and Unipet are re­quired to pay their bills they would have got­ their sub­sidy to pay the full $100 which would com­prise the $80 they got from the gas sta­tions and the $20 from the Gov­ern­ment.

There­fore, the sub­sidy is re­al­ly for Unipet to pass on to Paria since in ef­fect it is on­ly re­spon­si­ble for the $80 it got for sell­ing the fu­el.

If the Gov­ern­ment is late in pay­ing the $20 to Unipet and NP, it can be short on pay­ing Paria.

Dur­ing the im­passe be­tween Paria and Unipet, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter re­vealed that Unipet had racked up a mas­sive bill with the fu­el trader.

In the de­bate on the Fi­nance Bill , the Prime Min­is­terand omitting the debt the State owed Unipet, blast­ed the company for the un­paid bill, accusing the Op­po­si­tion of por­traying Unipet as the vic­tim in­stead of in­sist­ing that the com­pa­ny pay its debt to the state and mocking a sense of entitlement in a ridiculous and unproductive company.

Tax­pay­ers had to foot the bill for lawyers be­cause Unipet had filed an in­junc­tion to end the stand­off with Paria.

Paria stopped sup­plying all 24 Unipet gas sta­tions and long queues formed at NP gas sta­tions . Paria de­cid­ed to cut off Unipet’s fu­el sup­ply be­cause the com­pa­ny failed to rene­go­ti­ate a sup­ply agree­ment since April 2019. Cur­rent and for­mer chair­men of Paria con­firmed that there was nev­er any deal be­tween Paria and Unipet, on­ly an ” agree­ment.”

Sub­si­dies owed to Unipet is not in con­tention Paria chair­man said “ I can­not con­firm what VAT re­fund is owed by the Gov­ern­ment to Unipet and that is an is­sue for the Gov­ern­ment and not Paria. The sub­si­dies owed to Unipet is not in con­tention as that re­fund of the sub­si­dies to Unipet when re­ceived is for­ward­ed to Paria.”

He con­test­ed Unipet’s claims that it is owed a gas sub­sidy and said an un­signed agree­ment which al­lowed the con­tin­ued sup­ply to Unipet with­out a pay­ment since the com­pa­ny be­gan busi­ness in 2018 un­der for­mer chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet. Es­pinet spec­u­lat­ed that in­voic­es were not paid on the dates due.

 

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO Co-chair in COP25

 CLIMATE TALKS: The TT delegation at COP25 at Madrid, Spain. From left is Kishan Kumarsingh, head of the MEAU of the Planning Ministry, Sindy Singh, climate change specialist, and Ric Javed Ali, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Planning. –

Trinidad & Tobago was announced as the co-chair of negotiations on climate-linked loss and damage at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25)

December 2-13 in Madrid, Spain.

The Planning Ministry said the country continued to play a leadership role globally regarding climate change related matters.

The negotiations reviewed the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change Impacts (WIM), with a view to making recommendations. Agreed to in Warsaw, Poland in 2013 (COP19), the WIM aims to address climate-linked loss and damage by building knowledge and understanding, strengthening dialogue and coordination and enhancing action and support.

Planning Ministry head of the Multilateral Environmental Agreements Unit Kishan Kumarsingh is part of the delegation at COP25, and was appointed by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (advisory bodies to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to be the co-chair on behalf of TT.

Kumarsingh was selected due to his vast experience and success in contributing to climate change matters at the global level and played a key role in drafting and securing support for the Paris Agreement on climate change in its preparatory stages.

The Planning and Development Minister said TT also has the key role of negotiating on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and, as a small island developing state, TT must continue to ensure that its interests are well represented and elucidated at this fora along with other like-minded parties such as AOSIS and the Group of 77 and China.

The delegation from the Ministry includes Deputy Permanent Secretary Ric Javed Ali and climate change specialist Sindy Singh.

After two weeks, at great cost to taxpayers, talks failed to attract funds.

After Curaçao,Trinidad and Tobago has the second highest fossil CO2 emissions per capita in Latin America and the Caribbean, reaching 27.6 metric tons per capita in 2017. It produces 1.5 kilograms of waste per capita per day, the largest in the world.