Raphael John-Lall

The Min­istry of Fi­nance has al­lo­cat­ed $150 mil­lion to be paid to lo­cal con­trac­tors as part set­tle­ment of the $500 mil­lion owed to them. Mervyn Chin, Pres­i­dent, Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA), who re­vealed this to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. de­scribed it as a "par­tial re­lief". He said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai has asked the TTCA for an up­dat­ed sta­tus on the mat­ter and it will be for­ward­ed to him short­ly.

The TTCA and lo­cal con­trac­tors have been call­ing on the gov­ern­ment for years to pay mon­ey owed to them for lo­cal projects. Chin and his pre­de­ces­sor Mikey Joseph have been say­ing that the sit­u­a­tion has not been do­ing any good for the con­struc­tion sec­tor which is an im­por­tant part of the econ­o­my.

Two weeks ago, Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said the con­struc­tion sec­tor con­tributed sev­en per cent of the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP). Chin said the mon­ey will be dis­bursed in tranch­es but could not give fur­ther de­tails of how many con­trac­tors will be paid.

"I can on­ly speak for the TTCA mem­bers as I am not privy to debts owed to non-mem­bers. The Min­istry of Fi­nance dis­burs­es tranch­es to the var­i­ous min­istries and state agen­cies who in turn paid con­trac­tors like­wise," he said. Last week, at an ANSA Coat­ing Lim­it­ed award cer­e­mo­ny, Ger­ry Brooks, Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer of the ANSA McAL Group re­it­er­at­ed calls for the gov­ern­ment to move ur­gent­ly to set­tle all out­stand­ing debts to lo­cal con­trac­tors.

Chin said the ANSA McAL Group's con­cerns re­flects what the TTCA has been say­ing all along.