The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) is be­ing repo­si­tioned to di­ver­si­fy its port­fo­lio and sup­port new eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly through for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI), as the state util­i­ty con­tin­ues to make progress in re­solv­ing long-stand­ing labour is­sues.

That up­date was pro­vid­ed by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing An­gos­tu­ra’s launch of its so­lar pow­er sys­tem for its Bit­ters bot­tling plant which took place on Tues­day.

Padarath said T&TEC must adopt a new ap­proach to do­ing busi­ness, one that bal­ances its tra­di­tion­al res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial cus­tomer base with an an­tic­i­pat­ed in­flux of new, large scale users.

He ex­plained that gov­ern­ment has been re­ceiv­ing strong in­ter­est from for­eign in­vestors, es­pe­cial­ly in sec­tors such as da­ta cen­tres and man­u­fac­tur­ing, which re­quire sub­stan­tial elec­tric­i­ty ca­pac­i­ty.

“Just a few months ago, we start­ed off with a re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan. The min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for UDe­COTT in­di­cat­ed that we were just un­der 1,000 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est. With those 1,000 ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est, we are now drilling down in terms of spe­cif­ic projects.

“Some of those spe­cif­ic projects have to do with da­ta cen­tres. Da­ta cen­tres utilise a large ca­pac­i­ty of pow­er and pow­er gen­er­a­tion. And there­fore, ob­vi­ous­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go be­ing an at­trac­tive mar­ket be­cause of our low rates for elec­tric­i­ty, we will now have ad­di­tion­al cus­tomers on the T&T grid,” Padarath ex­plained.

The min­is­ter em­pha­sised his fo­cus re­mains on the net growth ex­pect­ed from FDI.

“A whole new ap­proach in terms of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment will have to be looked at in terms of those same rates. That is not a uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sion that will be tak­en by me as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties or T&TEC or even the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion. But these are things that we have to con­sid­er as well as once we are get­ting the for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, mak­ing sure that Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceives the best val­ue for the out­put that we are putting out in terms of elec­tric­i­ty on­to the grid,” he fur­ther ex­plained.

Against this back­drop of ex­pan­sion, Padarath al­so re­port­ed sig­nif­i­cant progress on labour mat­ters at T&TEC.

He said the util­i­ty is among the few State en­ti­ties to have set­tled out­stand­ing cost-of-liv­ing al­lowance (CO­LA) claims.

“We are able to make some more set­tle­ments, al­most about $30 mil­lion. We have been in con­stant dis­cus­sion with the OW­TU, which is a trade union rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&TEC work­ers. So over the last cou­ple of months, we have paid out, I would say, close to $350 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pay­ments that were owed to T&TEC work­ers,” the min­is­ter added.

As a re­sult, the min­is­ter said morale at T&TEC is high, adding that ne­go­ti­a­tions for the cur­rent pe­ri­od, as well as re­main­ing out­stand­ing mat­ters, are ex­pect­ed to move for­ward in the near fu­ture.

On res­i­den­tial elec­tric­i­ty rates, Padarath as­sured the pub­lic that Cab­i­net has tak­en no de­ci­sion to in­crease rates.

He said a Cab­i­net note sub­mit­ted by a for­mer min­is­ter—based on RIC rec­om­men­da­tions—has been with­drawn with Cab­i­net’s sup­port, re­mov­ing what he de­scribed as a “guil­lo­tine” hang­ing over the pop­u­la­tion.

At this time, he said, there is no ad­vance­ment to­ward res­i­den­tial rate in­creas­es.