KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has of­fi­cial­ly be­gun the process of seek­ing po­ten­tial buy­ers for state-owned as­sets ear­marked for di­vest­ment.

This was con­firmed by Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein yes­ter­day as he re­vealed in­vi­ta­tions for ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est have been is­sued, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment of plans to sell sev­er­al State-owned as­sets in­clud­ing the Hilton Trinidad, Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort, Na­tion­al Quar­ries and the La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Labid­co).

State-owned Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny yes­ter­day pub­lished, as news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments, re­quests for ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est for the ac­qui­si­tion of the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort and for HotelTT As­set Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny, which is a sub­sidiary of eTecK.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Ho­sein said the Gov­ern­ment was now await­ing re­spons­es from in­ter­est­ed par­ties be­fore de­ter­min­ing its next steps.

He said, “Promise made, promise kept. We said that we are go­ing to do our EOI to sell the as­sets. We have in fact is­sued the EOIs to­day. So we are wait­ing to see the re­spons­es that we get, and then all of those mat­ters will be eval­u­at­ed, and then the oth­er step will take place.”

The dead­line for the sub­mis­sions is Jan­u­ary 29. The news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment for the Mag­dale­na EOI out­lines that it is in­tend­ed sole­ly for mar­ket-sound­ing pur­pos­es and to in­form the de­vel­op­ment of a sub­se­quent com­pet­i­tive Re­quest for Pro­pos­als.

The move fol­lows Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment at the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the new $540 mil­lion Mar­riott re­sort at Rocky Point, To­ba­go, that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to di­vest sev­er­al of its com­mer­cial as­sets, ar­gu­ing that the State should not be in the busi­ness of op­er­at­ing ho­tels and oth­er com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so crit­i­cised the fi­nan­cial per­for­mance of sev­er­al state en­ter­pris­es, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Quar­ries, claim­ing that the com­pa­ny was pro­duc­ing ag­gre­gate at a cost high­er than its sell­ing price.

She al­so ques­tioned the con­tin­ued state own­er­ship of the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort, which re­cent­ly fur­loughed more than 50 work­ers for at least one month, cit­ing low oc­cu­pan­cy and re­duced busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

ETecK ac­quired all shares of Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad in Sep­tem­ber, re­nam­ing the com­pa­ny HotelTT As­set Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny, amid con­cerns that the in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel chain could with­draw its brand from the prop­er­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ar­gued that greater pri­vate-sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion is nec­es­sary to stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, at­tract in­vest­ment and re­duce the fi­nan­cial bur­den of state-owned com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions.