Michelle Loubon

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan says T&T is tap­ping in­to $600 mil­lion mar­kets in Latin Amer­i­ca. He said it was be­ing done un­der the watch of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He la­belled the mo­tion of no con­fi­dence as "a litany of false­hoods," at Par­lia­ment, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on March 2.

Ze­ro­ing in on Per­sad-Bisses­sar's at­tempt to stim­u­late the econ­o­my, Ram­bachan said: "We are tar­get­ing Latin Amer­i­ca. Brazil has an em­bassy here. I have re­ceived word that Ecuador wants to open an em­bassy here. We are tap­ping in­to $500 mil­lion mar­kets." Brazil formed part of the BRIC na­tions-in­clud­ing Rus­sia, In­dia and Chi­na.

Apart from Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets, Ram­bachan boast­ed the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship had sta­bilised the econ­o­my to such an ex­tent the "IMF was pre­dict­ing 1.7 per cent growth in 2012. The econ­o­my is about to turn around". While gov­ern­ment MPs thun­dered their sup­port, Point Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon re­tort­ed, "It hasn't hap­pened yet." But Ram­bachan was un­daunt­ed. He main­tained Dook­er­an had re­stored con­fi­dence.

Wrote off $4 bil­lion debt

Wad­ing in­to Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's view that the gov­ern­ment had in­her­it­ed a plat­form, Ram­bachan cit­ed sta­tis­tics which in­di­cat­ed the trea­sury was not as stashed. He said: "In Sep­tem­ber 2011, the trea­sury had bil­lion $5,742 com­pared to bil­lion $9,782 at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2010. In one we had writ­ten of $1 bil­lion in debt."

Apart from the trea­sury deficit, Ram­bachan lament­ed they had in­her­it­ed di­lap­i­dat­ed schools like Char­lieville, cost over­runs at To­ba­go hos­pi­tal, bil­lions of dol­lars of Petrotrin debts and a sit­u­a­tion in which 250,000 cit­i­zens were pover­ty-strick­en. Again, he shared the view Per­sad-Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship skills had cre­at­ed new jobs, stim­u­lat­ed the econ­o­my and re­stored the con­fi­dence of In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Agen­cies.

He said: "Her mis­sion is for the cre­ativ­i­ty of the peo­ple to flour­ish and pro­vide ed­u­ca­tion which would pro­mote com­pet­i­tive­ness and make T&T the cen­tre of the Caribbean and the re­gion." He al­so de­fend­ed her crit­ics' con­dem­na­tion of her over­seas trav­els as an at­tempt to "gain miles." Cit­ing the ex­am­ple of a lo­cal treat sug­ar cake, Ram­bachan said: "If you make sug­ar cake, you can­not stay at home and hope peo­ple would know what is in your kitchen."