In his re­cent bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo said the gov­ern­ment has “se­ri­ous lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors” and “will restart the Guaracara Re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre”. Good.

But nev­er for­get the shut-down, the ‘Petrotrin Sin’ by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion in which for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was a piv­otal fig­ure. To­day, in re­sponse to Tan­coo’s bud­get, Im­bert said the econ­o­my is head­ing for a crash. Such bold-faced­ness! Who put this coun­try’s econ­o­my on the road to de­struc­tion when they shut down our liv­ing work­ing re­fin­ery, a piv­otal na­tion­al eco­nom­ic force, throw­ing over 10,000 per­sons di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly on the bread-line, pau­peris­ing this na­tion which con­tin­ues to bleed from that mas­sive wound.

They claimed Petrotrin was close to in­sol­ven­cy and had not paid tax­es. Not true, folks. Petrotrin had paid $20.3 bil­lion in tax­es, be­tween 2010 and 2016, says Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI); and the com­pa­ny’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2017 proved it was not near in­sol­ven­cy. In­deed, be­tween 2016-18, Petrotrin re­ceived no sub­ven­tion from the gov­ern­ment. And on Feb­ru­ary 21 2018, di­rec­tor Nigel Ed­wards told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment, Petrotrin gen­er­at­ed cu­mu­la­tive Free Cash Flow (FCF) of + US$ 270 mil­lion (TT$ 1.8 bil­lion) in the five years be­tween 2013-2017 amidst col­lapsed oil prices. Is that ‘near in­sol­ven­cy’? What re­al­ly drove the sin­ful shut­down on No­vem­ber 30, 2018?

Many say it is the “fake oil” is­sue in­volv­ing the for­mer prime min­is­ter’s very good friend. We wouldn’t go there to­day. But we must note that in ad­di­tion to the Petrotrin board, three in­de­pen­dent re­ports by Kin­sey, Solomon and Lash­ley had ad­vised re­struc­tur­ing, not shut­ting down the re­fin­ery. Yet they closed it, rais­ing sus­pi­cions which in­ten­si­fied when the four gov­ern­ment mem­bers on the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of par­lia­ment vot­ed against a hear­ing on the is­sue, pre­vent­ing de­tailed analy­sis and in­ter­ro­ga­tion. The shut­down of the re­fin­ery re­mains one of the dark­est clouds hang­ing over Trinidad and To­ba­go.

And the dark­ness deep­ened un­der Colm Im­bert as fi­nance min­is­ter. For make no mis­take about it. The ‘Petrotrin Sin’ is at the heart of our present eco­nom­ic woes, in­clud­ing the for­eign ex­change cri­sis now stymieing the na­tion’s de­vel­op­ment. Be­fore the shut­down, the re­fin­ery’s prod­ucts earned a gross US$350 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly. But af­ter the clo­sure, be­tween 2018 and 2024, this coun­try spent over US$7.65 bil­lion to im­port prod­ucts our re­fin­ery once pro­duced for both do­mes­tic con­sump­tion and ex­port. Our low for­eign re­serves are to­day the di­rect re­sult of shut­ting down our re­fin­ery.

And Im­bert knows it. Af­ter the shut­down, he and his prime min­is­ter tried des­per­ate­ly to restart the re­fin­ery. “The num­ber one pri­or­i­ty” said Im­bert. As fi­nance min­is­ter he need­ed pre­cious, dwin­dling for­eign ex­change to im­port the prod­ucts that Petrotrin once pro­duced and earned for­eign ex­change: gaso­line, jet kerosene, kerosene, diesel, LPG, fu­el oil and bi­tu­men. Now we had to spend US$250 mil­lion every year to im­port those prod­ucts. a mas­sive loss which Im­bert him­self lament­ed as a “drain of for­eign ex­change to pur­chase im­port­ed fu­el.” Clear­ly, the cur­rent fragili­ty of the na­tion­al econ­o­my was seed­ed by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion when they shut down the re­fin­ery.

And hear this! Quot­ing from Cen­tral Bank doc­u­ments in his bud­get re­sponse and point­ing to an in­crease in re­serves Im­bert de­clared it had “ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with ad­di­tion­al for­eign ex­change be­ing gen­er­at­ed from the pro­duc­tive sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It is just loan fi­nanc­ing and with­drawals from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.”

So, what’s new Mr Im­bert? When did this start hap­pen­ing? How of­ten did you do it af­ter you shut down the re­fin­ery? How many times dur­ing your tenure did I write, “At present, re­serves are boost­ed, not by earn­ings from Petrotrin and oth­ers, but main­ly by for­eign bor­row­ings and with­drawals from the HSF! This econ­o­my is on life-sup­port!” In­deed, they bor­rowed mas­sive­ly and with­drew huge­ly from the HSF to “main­tain our lifestyle”, said the for­mer prime min­is­ter, but in­vest­ed lit­tle or noth­ing in the coun­try’s ca­pac­i­ty to earn for­eign ex­change, with­out which this coun­try would end up a dis­mal­ly failed state. The re­fin­ery shut­down land­ed this econ­o­my on life-sup­port from which this gov­ern­ment is nurs­ing it back to health!

To­day, our na­tion­al debt is 89 per cent of GDP, dan­ger­ous­ly above ac­cept­able lev­els. Twen­ty per cent of gov­ern­ment rev­enue goes in­to re­pay­ing debt, cur­tail­ing gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture, leav­ing less mon­ey in cir­cu­la­tion, re­duc­ing con­sumer pur­chas­ing pow­er and lim­it­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and ex­pan­sion.

Things could have been so dif­fer­ent. In June 2022 the BBC re­port­ed “Oil re­finer­ies are mak­ing near­ly five times more mon­ey from re­fin­ing petrol than a year ago.” From US$ 9.26 per bar­rel for petrol and US$ 6.24 per bar­rel for diesel “they are mak­ing US$43.11 on petrol, up 366 per cent, and $51.13 on diesel, a 648 per cent in­crease,” said the BBC. Very many bil­lions in rev­enue for coun­tries with re­finer­ies! But not Trinidad and To­ba­go. Our re­fin­ery was put to sleep. And 2026 is turn­ing out to be an­oth­er record year for re­finer­ies.

We con­tin­ue to miss out very big- time folks! We must there­fore wish this gov­ern­ment every suc­cess in restart­ing the re­fin­ery and we must al­ways re­mem­ber the an­swer to the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion, who crashed this econ­o­my?