AKASH SAMA­ROO

Op­po­si­tion Leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC MP, is ques­tion­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment is sig­nalling its in­ten­tion to close down the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP), with its pro­posed move to sell off and pri­va­tize all of NP’s gas sta­tions.

Dur­ing her re­sponse to the Gov­ern­ment’s 2021 Bud­get in the Par­lia­ment to­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said what makes the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny prof­itable in to­day’s mar­ket econ­o­my is the fran­chise agree­ments with the pe­tro­le­um deal­ers and/or the re­tail­ers.

She said NP ob­tains most of its prof­its un­der the cur­rent busi­ness mod­el plan of the man­age­ment and rental op­er­a­tions of the gas sta­tion net­work, which in­cludes the con­ve­nience stores that are op­er­at­ed by the deal­ers.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader added that this amounts to 70% of NP’s prof­its.

“Are they go­ing to come and put more than 500 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees and their fam­i­lies on the bread­line, as well as the thou­sands of cit­i­zens who are de­pen­dent on Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um con­trac­tors?”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said as it per­tains to the sale of the 75 sta­tions, the es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of the ser­vice sta­tions owned by NP is ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT $1 bil­lion, each of which has an ap­prox­i­mate val­ue of TT $15 mil­lion.

She said there must be no fire sale of state as­sets be­fore the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is op­er­a­tional.