RE: trin5 Sep 2018 10:23
A patriot tax for Petrotrin
WAYNE KUBLALSINGH
THE GRAND predecessors of Dr Keith Rowley have committed some epic economic blunders.
1. The abrupt truncation of the train economy. This results today in a savage, wasteful and all-consuming internal gas combustion economy, which, via the consumption of forex, our health, our ecology, our basic incomes and our time, gridlock and traffic, threatens to take us to hell in a coconut shell.
2. The introduction of a mega-school economy. The senior comprehensives and junior secondaries, shift system schooling, which, when adopted was known to be failing in the UK, trapped students, parents and education administration in an ungovernable mess, detrimental to proper administration and the health and well-being of teachers and the child.
3. The Master Gas Plan of 2001. This neo-liberal plan failed to correctly assess the gas situation in the republic to forecast the 2007 global recession, and wasted millions of dollars in pursuing a series of 14 heavy gas-based mega industries, four industrial estates, mega highways. Petrotrin/Government capped scores of oil wells for the collapsed Debe to Mon Desir highway.
4. The failure to use the rich assets of Caroni (1975) Ltd. The government failed to use Caroni’s 77,000 acres of port land, research and technical assets, its expertise and labour, its agrarian, horticultural and diary projects to lever a diversified economy. It had promised to keep the Usine St Madeline plant going, with a brace of small independent sugar farmers; but all ingloriously fell apart, some of the land and assets cannibalised by party favourites.
5. The Jones phenomena. Jones and the master energy technocrats and bureaucrats, aided and abetted by economists, with little understanding of macro-economics, bust Petrotrin. The lack of procurement, and geotechnical supervisory and monitoring expertise in WGTL, ultra low sulphur, the CCR Unit, the oil recovery project in Soldado, plunged Petrotrin into deep debt. This came on the back of a general failure to win new oil, asset degradation, a flinching approach to labour, and closure of valuable assets (the Texaco Star and Chatham Farm, horticulture).
The Petrotrin situation is complex, not irremediably complicated. On the following, the immediate stakeholders are not in severe disagreement:
1. Deep restructuring is necessary.
2. Land and sea technologies, expertise will need to be commandeered for efficient oil recovery.
3. The refinery plants have a future, now or in the medium or long term. Much of the technology is recent and competent. No one has advocated for the mothballing or cannibalisation of the plants.
4. The Government, management and labour need to severely manners themselves to meet the optimal needs of the industry.
5. Government finances are hard done by Petrotrin’s mismanagement debts.
6. The entire imbroglio has been propagandised, politicised, and personalised.
TT cannot any longer be com
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