Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

T&TEC is own­ing the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) $7 bil­lion and has not paid its bill for ten years ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Speak­ing re­cent­ly at the Spot­light on the Econ­o­my at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter ex­plained that T&TEC gets an an­nu­al sub­ven­tion of $700 mil­lion and even with that is ow­ing the NGC a whop­ping $7 bil­lion.

“Elec­tric­i­ty costs us $700 mil­lion dol­lars a year in sub­si­dies, and you might ask why? How does elec­tric­i­ty cost us $700M per an­num? The rea­son is that T&TEC is sup­plied with nat­ur­al gas from the NGC which has to buy that gas from bp and Shell and so on, T&TEC does not pay NGC for the gas, so NGC has a re­ceiv­able on its books that grows every year. The last time I looked at it, the re­ceiv­able was $7 bil­lion,” Im­bert told the spot­light on the econ­o­my.

This fig­ure is $2.5 bil­lion more than it was ow­ing the state en­ter­prise in 2019 when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed that the com­pa­ny was heav­i­ly in­debt­ed to the NGC.

Im­bert said the coun­try can­not af­ford to con­tin­ue sub­si­dis­ing elec­tric­i­ty to that ex­tent and al­so not­ed that some of the sub­si­dies, in­clud­ing at WASA and on fu­el must be re­duced sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

The is­sue has been a sore point for the NGC and as re­cent as last month, and in the midst of a mas­sive $4.7 bil­lion dol­lar turn­around of its for­tune, the NGC was be­moan­ing its in­abil­i­ty to col­lect bil­lions of dol­lars from T&TEC, say­ing it threat­ens the NGC’s abil­i­ty to grow.

In re­sponse to sev­er­al ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on its 2021 fi­nan­cial per­for­mance and the out­look for 2022, the NGC said, “We re­main very con­cerned about the non-pay­ment as well as the sub­si­dized gas price for the sup­ply of gas to T&TEC and the im­pact it would have on NGC’s growth as­pi­ra­tions. NGC con­tin­ues to en­gage key stake­hold­ers to­wards res­o­lu­tion of this chal­lenge.”

But the line min­is­ter for T&TEC, Mar­vin Gon­za­les said he did not un­der­stand why NGC was “whin­ing” about the sit­u­a­tion.

The min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged that the state of af­fairs was un­ac­cept­able but said the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion from high elec­tric­i­ty rates.

“NGC is ful­ly aware that the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is ful­ly cog­nisant of the con­cerns and as the gov­ern­ment we will col­lec­tive­ly ad­dress the prob­lem. NGC is al­so a stake­hold­er and is owned by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and the peo­ple of T&T and the Gov­ern­ment will ad­dress the prob­lem holis­ti­cal­ly, so I am not go­ing to re­spond to NGC di­rect­ly, I have stat­ed on pub­lic record what my views on those mat­ters are and I will work col­lec­tive­ly with my col­leagues in the Cab­i­net to ad­dress it,” Gon­za­les told Guardian Me­dia.

He added that while it makes aca­d­e­m­ic sense to let peo­ple pay a more re­al­is­tic price for elec­tric­i­ty it was not a sim­ple de­ci­sion for the Gov­ern­ment to make.

Gon­za­les said, “Giv­en the fact that the peo­ple of T&T are al­ready bur­dened with the high cost of liv­ing, and while it might be tech­ni­cal­ly and aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly ac­cu­rate to want to come to that con­clu­sion, things are more com­plex than that. You have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion if we re­move the sub­sidy how it is go­ing to af­fect the or­di­nary man and the or­di­nary woman who are al­ready com­plain­ing about the ris­ing cost of liv­ing.”