Con­tin­ues from yes­ter­day

The an­nounce­ment of the date came on De­cem­ber 16 in a brief an­nounce­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. Nom­i­na­tion day is Jan­u­ary 3.

The rul­ing Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment cur­rent­ly holds all 12 seats in the House of As­sem­bly and is look­ing to main­tain that po­si­tion.

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion says there are 48,942 elec­tors reg­is­tered to vote.

THA chief aec­re­tary, Orville Lon­don, who has held of­fice since 2001 and has served for four terms, has in­di­cat­ed that he will not be con­test­ing the Jan­u­ary elec­tion.

At a re­cent Busi­ness Con­fer­ence Lon­don was high­ly crit­i­cal of the na­tion­al Air­line Caribbean Air­lines say­ing To­ba­go needs "an air­line that is sen­si­tive and recog­nis­es that an in­vest­ment in To­ba­go at this point in time is go­ing to reap rich div­i­dends down the road."

And the long an­tic­i­pat­ed To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Bill to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to give self-gov­ern­ment to To­ba­go is still to be laid in the Par­lia­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had promised that the leg­is­la­tion would have been laid by De­cem­ber 16

The leg­is­la­tion was pre­pared af­ter dis­cus­sions were held by a team led by chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don and in­clud­ed for­mer chief sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles. It is ex­pect­ed to give the peo­ple of the is­land more au­ton­o­my.

The leg­is­la­tion pro­vides for the cre­ation of the new House so there will be the Cham­ber made up of the elect­ed as­sem­bly­men and the Peo­ple's House, which will be ap­point­ed by the rul­ing par­ty in the THA.

For­mer head of the pub­lic ser­vice, Regi­nald Du­mas, said he was very con­cerned about that mat­ter as the Peo­ple's House was to be ap­point­ed by the rul­ing par­ty in the THA.

PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke has in­di­cat­ed he will con­test the elec­tion un­der the ban­ner of his Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Duke will be run­ning for Rox­bor­ough/De­laford seat.

But the women's arm of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM is urg­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans, and in par­tic­u­lar women, to with­draw their sup­port for Duke, in light of al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct against him.

The par­ty has a forty page "Man­date not Man­i­festo," ac­cord­ing to Duke which has as its theme Let's Build a Bet­ter To­ba­go, Child by Child, Fam­i­ly by Fam­i­ly, Vil­lage by Vil­lage.

FAT­CA De­bate

A storm of a dif­fer­ent kind raged in Par­lia­ment with the re­turn of the For­eign Ac­counts Com­pli­ance Agree­ment- FAT­CA.

FAT­CA is the first piece of leg­is­la­tion brought by the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion which re­quires a con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty. This means that the Gov­ern­ment, which holds 23 seats in the par­lia­ment, must get the sup­port of at least three op­po­si­tion mem­bers of par­lia­ment.

De­bate on the Leg­is­la­tion first start­ed in the Par­lia­ment last Sep­tem­ber when the Op­po­si­tion UNC ex­pressed con­cerns about in­va­sion of rights of per­sons and rec­om­mend­ed that it be re­ferred to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee for scruti­ny, where it said ex­perts from the bank­ing and fi­nan­cial sec­tor could be called to give ad­vice on the leg­is­la­tion. The gov­ern­ment agreed but lat­er re­neged on the promise, lead­ing to a stand-off with the Op­po­si­tion on the leg­is­la­tion.

The law man­dates all fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to re­port on the ac­counts of US clients with more than US$50,000 to the US In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice the IRS.

Fail­ure to com­ply with Fat­ca would mean all fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and US cit­i­zens will be sub­ject to a with­hold­ing tax of 30 per cent ap­plied to all US-sourced in­come.

The bank­ing sec­tor lob­bied the politi­cians to en­sure the pas­sage of the Leg­is­la­tion be­fore the dead­line date of Sep­tem­ber 30th. But the two sides re­mained di­vid­ed and on the day the na­tion­al bud­get was pre­sent­ed the fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert told the coun­try he had sought and re­ceived an ex­ten­sion from the US gov­ern­ment. The new dead­line for FAT­CA com­pli­ance was Feb­ru­ary 2017 and the coun­try has un­til Sep­tem­ber 2017 to put all the nec­es­sary guide­lines in place.

The leg­is­la­tion re­turned to the Par­lia­ment in mid-de­cem­ber. On the day the house was to de­bate the leg­is­la­tion the Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar brought a mo­tion to ad­dress the coun­try's spi­ralling mur­der rate. The mo­tion was turned down by the Speak­er who ad­vised it was brought un­der the wrong stand­ing or­der. The op­po­si­tion leader ob­ject­ed and en­gaged in cross talk with the speak­er. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was put out of the house. As she left all op­po­si­tion MPs fol­lowed.

The de­bate con­tin­ued with the gov­ern­ment speak­ing to it­self in the Par­lia­ment and the na­tion through the live broad­cast of the pro­ceed­ings.

When the de­bate re­sumed on Mon­day De­cem­ber 12th the Op­po­si­tion was a no show in the Par­lia­ment choos­ing to look at the de­bate from a cau­cus room as­signed to it in the Par­lia­ment build­ing.

The Fnance Min­is­ter wound up the de­bate de­clar­ing he "was ashamed to be a Par­lia­men­tar­i­an," and urged the op­po­si­tion to re­turn to the house "come in" he said.

The Leg­is­la­tion went to the Com­mit­tee stage with on­ly PNM MPs present. Fur­ther dis­cus­sion on the Leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment is set for Jan­u­ary 6th2017.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her team say they do not in­tend to budge on their de­mand for a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee since the bill is too im­por­tant to the rights of peo­ple.

T&T deep­ens ties with Venezuela

Trinidad and To­ba­go's his­tor­i­cal ties with Venezuela were strength­ened this year with a vis­it to this coun­try of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro, the first by a vis­it­ing head of State since the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment led by Dr Kei­th Row­ley was elect­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The vis­it came at a time when Venezuela was in the throes of a se­vere eco­nom­ic down­turn which has seen protests for food and med­ical sup­plies.

The two lead­ers dis­cussed sev­er­al mat­ters of mu­tu­al in­ter­est in­clud­ing en­hanc­ing bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion in the ar­eas of for­eign pol­i­cy and en­er­gy and trade. PM Row­ley de­scribed the talks as "very pro­duc­tive and use­ful."

Fol­low­ing their dis­cus­sions an agree­ment was signed to di­rect op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies to pro­ceed with cross bor­der ini­tia­tives. He said the two sides had signed an MOU in or­der to fur­ther boost their trade and eco­nom­ic re­la­tions.

He said as this coun­try's clos­est neigh­bour and shar­ing in the same kind of chal­lenges the two coun­tries need to work to­geth­er. Dr Row­ley said the agree­ments signed with re­spect to the en­er­gy sec­tor "could see the mon­eti­sa­tion of cross bor­der gas, Venezue­lan gas in Trinidad plants and to­geth­er Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­proach the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket...for these ac­tiv­i­ties".

Dur­ing the talks this coun­try agreed to pro­vide re­lief to Venezuela in the form of a sup­ply of man­u­fac­tured goods from Trinidad and To­ba­go. This coun­try sub­se­quent­ly sent a range of goods val­ued at mil­lions of dol­lars to help ease the short­ages in that coun­try.

By No­vem­ber the Prime Min­is­ter was pay­ing a rec­i­p­ro­cal vis­it to Venezuela. Three agree­ments, were signed.

The first agree­ment es­tab­lish­es a project that will sup­ply nat­ur­al Venezue­lan gas to Trinidad and To­ba­go via an in­ter­con­nec­tion through the Drag­on-CIG­MA (Drag­on Field) ex­port gas pipeline to the CIG­MA com­plex near Guiria, in the Gulf of Paria, Su­cre state.

The sec­ond agree­ment was be­tween Venezue­lan oil com­pa­ny PDVSA and Shell Venezuela to re­duce gas flar­ing fol­low­ing con­cerns in Mon­a­gas state.

PDVSA and Shell, al­so signed a mem­o­ran­dum to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions to ob­tain fi­nan­cial re­sources for the PDVSA-Shell Petrore­gion­al del La­go crude oil joint pro­duc­tion project in Mara­cai­bo Lake's Ur­dane­ta West field, Zu­lia state.

Pres­i­dent Maduro said "a fourth agree­ment will be signed and an­nounced when its trans­la­tion in­to Span­ish is com­plete."

PM's health care

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had a health scare in Au­gust. Short­ly be­fore head­ing out on va­ca­tion he vis­it­ed his lo­cal doc­tor and he sub­se­quent­ly told the coun­try they saw some­thing of in­ter­est to them.

No one knew what it was but the coun­try was told that Dr Row­ley would have to be ex­am­ined fur­ther by a for­eign team of doc­tors.

On his re­turn home Dr Row­ley said that the tests he un­der­went while on va­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States, showed that he is in good health. He said "My doc­tors have pro­nounced me in good health and I have no ail­ment and no symp­toms that would pre­vent me from car­ry­ing out my du­ties".

The tests re­lat­ed to changes de­tect­ed to his prostate by lo­cal doc­tors, and the Prime Min­is­ter ad­vised all the men in T&T for­get be­ing ma­cho and to get them­selves ex­am­ined on a reg­u­lar ba­sis once you get past age 40.

A 92 per cent de­crease in the coun­try's earn­ings from the en­er­gy sec­tor in 2016, fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert told the coun­try Pe­tro­le­um Rev­enue de­clined from $19.3 bil­lion in 2014 to $1.7 bil­lion in 2016. Rev­enue from tax­a­tion roy­al­ties on oil and gas prof­its al­so de­clined from $57 bil­lion in 2014 to $37 bil­lion in 2016 a 35 per cent de­cline.

It was in this sce­nario that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­sent­ed his $47.4 bil­lion dol­lar bud­get with an ad­mis­sion that the bud­get was 5.6 per cent high­er than the rev­enue ex­pec­ta­tions for 2016. The Bud­get was pred­i­cat­ed on an oil price of US$48 per bar­rel and a gas price of US$2.25 per MMB­TU.

Im­bert made it clear that the coun­try's econ­o­my was in an even more per­ilous state than the Gov­ern­ment had en­vis­aged.

In June, Im­bert stat­ed that hav­ing bor­rowed TT$3.1 bil­lion from lo­cal banks and drawn down TT$2.5 bil­lion from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF), that he would trav­el over­seas to bor­row US$1 bil­lion on the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­ket.

In Ju­ly Im­bert em­barked on his 'road­show' to woo US banks in­to fi­nanc­ing a chunk of this coun­try's deficit spend­ing. On his re­turn the Min­is­ter told the me­dia the road­show was a "re­sound­ing suc­cess." He said T and T had re­ceived of­fers of par­tic­i­pa­tion from over 250 in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment firms.

Im­bert had set out to raise US$1 bil­lion and on his re­turn he re­port­ed that his trav­els to Lon­don, Los An­ge­les and New York and meet­ings with in­vestors were "well worth it be­cause we achieved the out­come."

He said, "With­in two hours, we had re­ceived of­fers of US$3.5 bil­lion dol­lars."

The TT dol­lar de­pre­ci­at­ed against the US dol­lar by 4.9 per cent with the sell­ing rate mov­ing from $6.45 in Jan­u­ary to $6.77 on De­cem­ber 21st. But the de­mand for for­eign ex­change showed no signs of abat­ing. The coun­try's for­eign ex­change re­serves fell from US$9.78 bil­lion in De­cem­ber 2015 to US$9.54 bil­lion at the end of No­vem­ber 2016.

Busi­ness in­ter­ests ex­pressed con­cern at the grow­ing prob­lems to get for­eign ex­change and for the av­er­age cit­i­zen it be­came more dif­fi­cult to buy US dol­lars for for­eign trav­el.

A sev­en per cent on­line tax for pur­chas­es took ef­fect in Oc­to­ber and by year's end the fi­nance min­is­ter was re­port­ing that the gov­ern­ment had ben­e­fit­ted from the tax to the tune of TT$6 mil­lion.

One of the hard­est hit sec­tors this year was the en­er­gy sec­tor which reeled un­der a drop in oil and gas prices. As of De­cem­ber 20th West Texas in­ter­me­di­ate crude av­er­aged just over US$43 a bar­rel for 2016. Crude oil pro­duc­tion was at its low­est av­er­ag­ing just over 70 thou­sand bar­rels per day com­pared to 2015 when the pro­duc­tion was above 78 thou­sand bar­rels per day.

Nat­ur­al Gas pro­duc­tion as of Oc­to­ber av­er­aged 3.335 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day, com­pared to the pre­vi­ous 3.833 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day the pre­vi­ous year. In this sce­nario gas sup­plies to some com­pa­nies on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate were im­pact­ed, some com­pa­nies pro­duc­tion now un­der 70% be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion. With the econ­o­my on the down slide thou­sands of work­ers were thrown on the bread­line, the largest group 644 were from the Arcelor Mit­tal Steel Plant which closed its doors in March in a "vol­un­tary wind-up." The Com­pa­ny list­ed its li­a­bil­i­ties at US$280 mil­lion and its as­sets at US$70 mil­lion.

The clo­sure of the steel plant fol­lowed a rul­ing by the In­dus­tri­al Court that the Com­pa­ny should pay full wages to work­ers who had been laid off in De­cem­ber 2015.

By Year's end over 22 thou­sand peo­ple were un­em­ployed, and the Cen­tral Bank re­port­ed that the un­em­ploy­ment rate had in­creased from 3.3% for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year to 3.5 per cent.

Faris and gun is­sue

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal caused a na­tion­al stir when he pro­duced pho­tographs of two teenagers pos­ing with UMP 9 mil­lime­tre guns which the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force us­es. Mooni­lal said the teens had a strik­ing re­sem­blance to a se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.

Al-Rawi called a news con­fer­ence telling the me­dia that the train­ing was a mat­ter of se­cu­ri­ty. He said up­on be­com­ing AG in Sep­tem­ber 2015, a threat as­sess­ment was con­duct­ed and the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies in­struct­ed that it was im­per­a­tive that the in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols for train­ing how peo­ple are ex­posed to threats had to be de­liv­ered by the se­cu­ri­ty forces to him and his fam­i­ly.

He said his fam­i­ly was tak­en up to "the Cu­mu­to base where in­struc­tions as to threats against our per­sons and cir­cum­stances were pro­vid­ed. The pro­to­cols were very care­ful­ly di­rect­ed un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the army.

The AG did not con­firm that the chil­dren in the pho­tos were his, how­ev­er he lashed out at Mooni­lal, say­ing he holds him in rig­or­ous con­tempt of moral­i­ty for drag­ging fam­i­ly mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren, in­to a con­ver­sa­tion for po­lit­i­cal mileage.

It would be Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley who would con­firm the teens were Al Rawi's chil­dren. The Prime Min­is­ter said while Mooni­lal claimed to have dropped a bomb or mark in Par­lia­ment, "a se­ri­ous breach had tak­en place.

The Prime Min­is­ter said, "Two things hap­pened here. The of­fi­cer who would have tak­en that pic­ture and to have pub­li­cised it as part of the work go­ing on at Camp Cu­mu­to, that of­fi­cer would have breached a lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty and has cre­at­ed a threat for the chil­dren of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al."

Row­ley said pass­ing such in­for­ma­tion to an Op­po­si­tion mem­ber was "meant to harm."

He said "It is ir­re­spon­si­ble on the part of the of­fi­cer who took that pic­ture."

Row­ley said mem­bers of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, "es­pe­cial­ly those who are charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­tect­ing of­fi­cers of State and their fam­i­lies, that they have a du­ty and must have some re­spect for the job that they car­ry out. Be­cause if it is you lose con­fi­dence in the peo­ple around you, who are to safe­guard you from those who would want to harm you, I rather be with­out them you know."

Row­ley said re­cent­ly he had to re­move Spe­cial Branch from the Prime Min­is­ter's de­tail be­cause they pub­licly said they could not guar­an­tee him se­cu­ri­ty.

The PM told Mooni­lal he found it strange his sight was so good now, not­ing that when a video of his for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship col­league sur­faced he did not know who the per­son was,"but the back of a pho­to­graph...the back of a child you know who it is now. You could look at the back of a child and know who the fa­ther is, but you couldn't know your col­league was in Cas­cade snort­ing."

TO COME IN 2017:

�2Prop­er­ty Tax, at an across the board rate of 3% ini­tial­ly.

�2Leg­isla­tive re­quire­ments for the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty by the 2nd quar­ter of 2017

�2Reg­u­la­tion of the gam­ing in­dus­try

�2$100 ex­emp­tion on elec­tric­i­ty bills with a val­ue of less than $300 (this took ef­fect in De­cem­ber con­sumers will feel the ben­e­fit of this by Feb­ru­ary

�2VAT ex­emp­tions for for­eign yacht re­pair ser­vice to take ef­fect in the first quar­ter of 2017

�2Par­tial di­vest­ment of Lake As­phalt

�250 per cent of out­stand­ing ar­rears to pub­lic of­fi­cers to be paid in cash by the end of March 2017.