Resh­ma Ra­goonath

State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) is sit­ting on a $24 mil­lion fund, gen­er­at­ed from rev­enues that the gas com­pa­ny has fore­gone from the sale of the com­mod­i­ty to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers. This was re­vealed by NGC Pres­i­dent In­dar Ma­haraj yes­ter­day as he urged en­ter­pris­ing busi­ness­peo­ple to ac­cess the com­pa­ny's in­dus­try fund to seize op­por­tu­ni­ties in the en­er­gy sec­tor. It is in­tend­ed that the mon­ey be used to as­sist man­u­fac­tur­ers in im­prov­ing their en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy. "We have that $24 mil­lion just sit­ting there," Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day as he ad­dressed the En­er­gy Cham­ber's, "Con­ver­sa­tion with the NGC Pres­i­dent," lun­cheon at Cara Suites in Clax­ton Bay. The fund, he said, was es­tab­lished through a joint agree­ment be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and NGC.

Ma­haraj lament­ed that the fund, which has been in ex­is­tence for some time, is not be­ing utilised and he in­tends to change that un­der his tenure. "The fund is here. It is in­tend­ed to de­vel­op the com­mer­cial en­er­gy sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go and there­fore we need to open it up and widen the scope of it so that more peo­ple and more or­gan­i­sa­tions will be able to ac­cess it," Ma­haraj said. He ex­plained that the fund was a joint ini­tia­tive be­tween the NGC and TTMA to ser­vice the light in­dus­tri­al con­sumers sec­tor (LIC.) He said fund is on­ly open to com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es in­ter­est­ed in set­ting up busi­ness­es with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor and down­stream in­dus­tries. "It is on the books and in the bank. It is not a fic­ti­tious fund, it is re­al mon­ey," Ma­haraj told re­porters. The NGC pres­i­dent ad­mit­ted that the fact that the fund re­mained vir­tu­al­ly un­touched is an in­di­ca­tion that the cri­te­ria made it "very tough for peo­ple to get in and to a large ex­tent mon­ey re­mained there." He said any pro­pos­als to ac­cess the fund will be re­viewed to de­ter­mine if it is ac­cept­able or not.

The re­view, he said, will con­sid­er if the pro­pos­als are "go­ing to gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al busi­ness, ad­di­tion­al em­ploy­ment, gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty then we will sup­port it." Ma­haraj said he will be en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions with the var­i­ous cham­bers of com­merce and or­gan­i­sa­tions to dis­cuss the fund with their mem­bers. He said NGC is al­so re­view­ing its gas pric­ing poli­cies to make sure that the com­pa­ny re­mains com­pet­i­tive with oth­er nat­ur­al gas sup­pli­ers in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. He told cham­ber mem­bers that NGC is ac­tive­ly purs­ing in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties with African na­tions, in­clud­ing Tan­za­nia and Nige­ria. "There is a whole world out there. There are op­por­tu­ni­ties and we are go­ing out there to look for them," he said. How­ev­er, im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the En­er­gy Cham­ber, Charles Per­cy, urged Ma­haraj to be cau­tious of such op­por­tu­ni­ties. "Let us be sure we know what we are get­ting in­to," he said.