Gail Alexan­der

The sale of Na­tion­al Flour Mills’ (NFM’s) rice mill op­er­a­tion at Carlsen Field is on hold as well as the ini­tial­ly planned di­vest­ment of the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (VM­COTT).

This is among plans for 2021 stat­ed in Gov­ern­ment’s State En­ter­pris­es Sec­tor re­port for the 2020/21 fis­cal year. The re­port is one of 11 which ac­com­pa­nied the 2021 Bud­get speech pre­sent­ed on Mon­day.

The State En­ter­pris­es Sec­tor com­pris­es 57 com­pa­nies of which 44 are whol­ly-owned, eight are ma­jor­i­ty-owned and five in which Gov­ern­ment has a mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ing.

These en­ti­ties op­er­ate in the gas and oil in­dus­try, bank­ing and fi­nan­cial ser­vices, man­u­fac­tur­ing, trans­port and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, tourism, agri­cul­ture, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and the pro­vi­sion of so­cial ser­vices.

Through their in­vest­ment pro­grammes, state-owned en­ter­pris­es are pro­ject­ed to ramp up over­all ex­pen­di­ture in this fis­cal year by $2.7 bil­lion to $6.5 bil­lion. Of that sum, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.1 bil­lion will be in­vest­ed for projects in the health sec­tor and an­oth­er $1.1 bil­lion for ex­pen­di­ture on schools.

In­vest­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor is pro­ject­ed to com­mand $1.3 bil­lion.

The doc­u­ment gave a sta­tus re­port on the sale of as­sets pro­gramme, which com­menced in fis­cal 2021 and con­tin­ued in fis­cal 2019.

The sale of the NFM’s rice mill at Carlsen Field was be­ing pur­sued in 2019/2020 but that is now on hold as is the VM­COTT di­vest­ment which had al­so been a 2019 con­ver­sa­tion.

In 2019 the Na­tion­al Rice Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion told a Par­lia­men­tary team that T&T’s rice in­dus­try is “on the brink of to­tal col­lapse” and no one want­ed to buy the Carlsen Field rice mill be­cause of a dras­tic drop in the grow­ing of lo­cal rice to be milled there.

Farm­ers said the state failed to pro­vide farm­ers with a guar­an­teed mar­ket and price for their goods.

Yes­ter­day, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MP Rudy In­dars­ingh ques­tioned what will be done with the rice mill.

“Gov­ern­ment needs to come clean on the sit­u­a­tion. In the short­age of food which could be loom­ing ahead due to the ef­fect of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on glob­al sup­ply mar­kets, T&T needs to un­der­stand its po­si­tion and any­thing that can help the rice pro­duc­tion sec­tor should be im­por­tant and be ef­fi­cient­ly run.”

“But Gov­ern­ment has sent con­tra­dict­ing mes­sages on the agri­cul­ture sec­tor all of last term and now this term - first it was that agri­cul­ture wasn’t im­por­tant and now they’re say­ing it is.”

Al­so on hold are ex­pan­sion of ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties and re­lat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, of the Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Lim­it­ed and ac­qui­si­tion and re­fur­bish­ment of the ad­ja­cent NGC hangar and fa­cil­i­ties at Cam­den Cou­va.

How­ev­er, the par­tial di­vest­ment of 49 per cent of the share­hold­ing of Lake As­phalt of Trinidad and To­ba­go (1978) Lim­it­ed (LATT ) to an in­ter­na­tion­al strate­gic part­ner is on­go­ing.

The sale has con­tin­ued - through com­pet­i­tive process­es—of 50 per cent of the in­dus­tri­al es­tates now un­der Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (eTecK).

Bud­get doc­u­ments al­so in­clud­ed the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan for To­ba­go which has To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions in Jan­u­ary.

The To­ba­go PSIP fo­cuss­es on re­viv­ing, boost­ing and se­cur­ing sec­tors from to in­fra­struc­ture to tourism in the face of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which dras­ti­cal­ly af­fect­ed the is­land’s tourism earn­ings in par­tic­u­lar. Some $14 mil­lion is re­served for To­ba­go’s tourism with $1.6 mil­lion to re­fur­bish cer­tain projects.

One of To­ba­go’s projects for 2021 is a plan to re­move the sar­gas­sum weed whose resur­gence is clog­ging some beach­es.

The re­port al­so not­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of the much-tout­ed two fast fer­ries for To­ba­go.

This project in­volves the de­sign, con­struc­tion and de­liv­ery of a 94-me­tre high-speed pas­sen­ger/car­go roll-on/roll-off cata­ma­ran by the ship­builders AUSTAL and the de­sign con­struc­tion and de­liv­ery of a 100-me­tre high-speed pas­sen­ger/car­go roll-on/roll-off cata­ma­ran fer­ry by IN­CAT. The es­ti­mat­ed cost of the project is $1 bil­lion.

The es­ti­mat­ed ex­pen­di­ture for the pe­ri­od April to Sep­tem­ber 2020 is $48 mil­lion and for fis­cal 2021 is $99 mil­lion. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said one fer­ry, which can car­ry 900 pas­sen­gers, ar­rives by year-end and starts to work next year, and the oth­er ar­rives in 2021 al­so.