JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Tus­sle be­tween Plan­ning Min­istry and JCC...

Invaders Bay project stalled

by

20150808

An al­most five-year bat­tle be­tween the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my has stalled the bil­lion-dol­lar pro­posed In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment project.

Busi­ness­man Derek Chin, own­er of the Movi­eTowne fran­chise, has aban­doned his por­tion of the two-part project af­ter wait­ing four years for the deed to ten acres of state lands in In­vaders Bay, Port-of-Spain. Chin's com­pa­ny, Dachin Com­pa­ny Ltd, was picked for a 10.2-acre de­vel­op­ment, while an­oth­er lo­cal firm, In­vaders Bay Ma­ri­na Com­pa­ny (IBMC), was se­lect­ed for the de­vel­op­ment of the oth­er 13 acres of the bil­lion-dol­lar land de­vel­op­ment deal.

This is the source of some con­fu­sion, how­ev­er, as com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the JCC's pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond, ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian, de­tailed that the land deal for Chin's por­tion of the $1.28 bil­lion project was part of a long-term rental agree­ment with Chin's com­pa­ny and not the re­sult of a sale.

Ac­cord­ing to one Min­istry of Plan­ning let­ter to the JCC on Oc­to­ber 31,2014, Chin's com­pa­ny was ex­pect­ed to lease the land al­lo­cat­ed for the de­vel­op­ment. There was no in­di­ca­tion that Chin was about to pur­chase the state lands.

"Gen­er­al­ly, com­mer­cial leas­es of this na­ture are for 30 years, re­new­able, per­mit­ted us­es are de­fined and they are based on le­git­i­mate val­u­a­tions linked to mar­ket rates. The same holds for 99-year leas­es in re­spect of res­i­den­tial. Leas­es will be linked to land use as ap­pro­pri­ate–com­mer­cial or res­i­den­tial," the let­ter from the min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary stat­ed.

But in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Chin, he re­vealed that he was ac­tu­al­ly ready and able to pur­chase the 10.2-acre prop­er­ty for just over $130 mil­lion.

"We have ne­go­ti­at­ed a price for ten acres and await­ing fi­nal docs. The price is $130 mil­lion. We are hop­ing to buy some land once ap­proved to do the project," Chin wrote in re­sponse to emailed ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian.

More hic­cups from JCC

Chin said, how­ev­er, with just one month to go be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion, he was not con­fi­dent that his six-year dream would come true and he was even more con­cerned that the JCC's con­stant in­ter­ven­tion would cre­ate more hic­cups if the project ever got off the ground.

Let­ters ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian show that the JCC had tabled its con­cerns about the award of the bil­lion-dol­lar project with Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Dr Bhoe Tewarie since 2011.

"It's an in­vest­ment. No ten­der or bid on any­thing so the JCC needs to check it­self," Chin said.

The Min­istry of Plan­ning stat­ed that the val­u­a­tions on the pro­posed ar­eas of de­vel­op­ment were pro­vid­ed by the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion, Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my, val­u­a­tors en­gaged by the pro­posed de­vel­op­ers and BC­QS In­ter­na­tion­al, a com­pa­ny re­tained by Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers on be­half of the min­istry. It re­vealed then that the land to be "leased to IB­MG" was val­ued at $247,084,710, while Chin's share was pegged at $204,518,200.

In Au­gust 2014, af­ter a se­ries of ques­tions on the pro­posed project dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary sit­ting, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed then that state-con­trolled Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) was re­spon­si­ble for the de­vel­op­ment.

But Ude­cott's chair­man Jear­lean John, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, could on­ly com­ment on a part of the project and di­rect­ed all ques­tions re­gard­ing Chin's por­tion to the Min­istry of Plan­ning.

"I can­not speak to that. What I can tell you about is the 51-acre piece al­lo­cat­ed for de­vel­op­ment by Ude­cott," John said.

The Sun­day Guardian then texted John for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of the project and Chin's por­tion of the de­vel­op­ment deal.

"The ten­der for the de­signs for in­fra­struc­tur­al works was won by BBFL (Blake Be­ston Fran­cois Lim­it­ed)," John said.

"Up­on com­ple­tion of these de­signs there will be an­oth­er open ten­der for the road­ways, waste wa­ter, elec­tri­cal, plumb­ing etc. I can't com­ment on Mr Chin please," John replied via text mes­sage.

The JCC, in a let­ter dat­ed Ju­ly 6, 2015, lodged a for­mal com­plaint with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion cit­ing pos­si­ble breach­es of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act in re­la­tion to the de­vel­op­ment at In­vaders Bay. The JCC, in its let­ter, claimed that the lack of in­for­ma­tion and trans­paren­cy in the way this bil­lion-dol­lar de­vel­op­ment was han­dled was grounds for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

"The state lands at In­vaders Bay are pub­lic re­sources...it is for that rea­son that the post fac­to pub­li­ca­tion of as­sess­ment cri­te­ria is con­sid­ered to be sol­id grounds for de­clar­ing the ten­der process void­able," the JCC let­ter states.

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed both Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai and the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at that min­istry, Vish­nu Dhan­paul, seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on the pos­si­ble breach of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act in the award of this con­tract but both men di­rect­ed all queries back to the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Tewarie.

Howai, in re­sponse to emailed ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian, said he checked with Tewarie and was in­formed that "so far no mon­ey has been spent on the project".

"I should add that from my knowl­edge of it, there will be a re­quire­ment for some spend on in­fra­struc­ture which is what Gov­ern­ment nor­mal­ly does but the de­vel­op­ment of the project will be us­ing pri­vate sec­tor fund­ing," Howai added.

Tewarie: Tim­ing of JCC let­ter a sto­ry by it­self

But Tewarie was not able to shed any more light on the mega-project. He said the signed Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) with the two de­vel­op­ers was ne­go­ti­at­ed by Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers on be­half of the min­istry.

"No funds have been ex­pend­ed on the In­vaders Bay project so far. The MoU's do, how­ev­er, iden­ti­fy state re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pro­vi­sion of in­fra­struc­ture to open up ac­cess to the lands and pri­vate de­vel­op­ers' re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­vel­op­ment of lands leased to them at mar­ket rates," he said.

He al­so re­spond­ed to the JCC's claim that the MoU's were be­ing kept pri­vate.

"The mat­ter of the MoU's not be­ing pub­licly re­leased is eas­i­ly un­der­stood in a con­text in which the ac­tu­al leas­es for the land still re­main to be ex­e­cut­ed by Ude­cott which is the land own­er. Thus, the mat­ter re­mains del­i­cate," Tewarie said.

"I should al­so men­tion that the Min­istry of Plan­ning had set in­to mo­tion the process for invit­ing in­vestors for In­vaders Bay un­der the last PNM (Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment) ad­min­is­tra­tion and that this In­vaders Bay mat­ter has been con­tro­ver­sial from the be­gin­ning be­cause pow­er­ful busi­ness in­ter­ests aligned to po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est are at war," he said.

"The fact that this mat­ter is now be­ing re­ferred to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion five weeks be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion tells a sto­ry by it­self," he said.

When asked about the sale of the ten acres to Chin as a pri­vate de­vel­op­er, Tewarie re­ferred the mat­ter back to Ude­cott.

"Ude­cott is re­spon­si­ble for In­vaders Bay land and de­vel­op­ment. The land is vest­ed in Ude­cott. All de­vel­op­ers, there­fore, have to deal with them but Cab­i­net has made de­ci­sions which Ude­cott must pur­sue to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives of Mr Chin (Dachin) and Mr (Jer­ry) Joseph (IBMC) with whom ne­go­ti­a­tions were con­clud­ed by Min­istry of Plan­ning through PwC lead­ing to MoU's. Be­yond these two de­vel­op­ments there are about 40 acres of land at In­vaders Bay still open for de­vel­op­ment by Ude­cott," he said.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored