Ke­jan Haynes

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is ad­mit­ting to ad­di­tion­al cost over­runs at the ANR Robin­son Air­port which dif­fer from fig­ures he pro­vid­ed to jour­nal­ists dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Thurs­day. As of now, the cost is clos­er to TT$118 mil­lion (US$17.5 mil­lion) and not TT$16.9m (US$2.5m) he orig­i­nal­ly stat­ed.

The new in­for­ma­tion ini­tial­ly came from a leaked Cab­i­net note which showed the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s re­quest and ap­proval for ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for the project. The note was cir­cu­lat­ed hours af­ter Im­bert ad­dressed the mat­ter on Wednes­day and was raised by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as she dou­bled down on her claims that Gov­ern­ment had mis­man­aged the project.

This forced Im­bert to call a sec­ond me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, where he ad­dressed me­dia re­ports high­light­ing the dis­crep­an­cies in his orig­i­nal state­ments.

When Im­bert spoke at the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, he said, “As of to­day, the orig­i­nal con­struc­tion con­tract sum has been ex­ceed­ed by US$2.5 mil­lion or two per cent.”

That sum, ac­cord­ing to the Cab­i­net note, came from an es­ti­mate of US$14.2 mil­lion (TT$96.3m) for vari­a­tions to the con­trac­tor - Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion (CR­C­C­CL). A to­tal of US$11.7 mil­lion (TT$79.3m) was paid from the project con­tin­gency fund, and the bal­ance of US$2.5 mil­lion came from the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions.

But the leaked cab­i­net note dat­ed No­vem­ber 28 al­so shed more light on some of the oth­er funds re­quest­ed, name­ly an ad­vance pay­ment of US$15m (TT$101.5m) to CR­C­C­CL to ad­dress pend­ing claims. The con­trac­tor, Im­bert ex­plained, made a claim of US$30m (TT$204m), and Nid­co rec­om­mend­ed they pay the ad­vance while Gov­ern­ment set­tles the claim.

The dis­crep­an­cies were point­ed out to Im­bert, with a clear ques­tion as to why he didn’t state all of this in­for­ma­tion on Thurs­day.

Im­bert ex­plained that he on­ly want­ed to ad­dress what he knew with cer­tain­ty at the time. He said he want­ed to be care­ful not to speak about things he was not ful­ly in­formed about, since re­porters had asked him to com­ment on re­ports he didn’t have in front of him.

But when it was point­ed out to Im­bert that he had ac­cess to the Cab­i­net note which con­tained all the in­for­ma­tion about all pos­si­ble ad­di­tion­al costs, he re­spond­ed: “I’m sure you would have got it in due course, re­mem­ber, this is a live project, an ac­tive project. We’re push­ing to have it fin­ished, and noth­ing is se­cret in Trinidad and To­ba­go, this would have even­tu­al­ly come in­to the pub­lic do­main.”

Im­bert said he was not con­cerned about any­one leak­ing the Cab­i­net note, which is sup­posed to be con­fi­den­tial.

In ex­plain­ing the ad­di­tion­al costs be­ing paid, Im­bert said, “All that has been ap­proved by the em­ploy­er project man­ag­er con­sul­tants is that 2.5 mil­lion US dol­lars. The claims have not been set­tled. And as I said, they are in ne­go­ti­a­tion with the con­trac­tor right now on the claims. There’s an ad­vance; it may go up, it may go down.”

The claims come from ex­ten­sive de­lays. The project was ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2023 but had to be pushed back be­cause of COVID-19. There would have been ad­di­tion­al de­lays be­cause of the time it took to com­plete the land ac­qui­si­tion, which was 290 days.

An­oth­er de­lay came once con­sul­tant CEP’s con­tract came to an end.

Im­bert again de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion not to re­hire CEP but al­so stressed they were not fired be­cause they de­clined to “rub­ber stamp” ques­tion­able as­pects of the de­sign.

He said CEP was hired by Nid­co as the ini­tial de­sign re­view con­sul­tant for the project. CEP re­viewed and signed off on the con­trac­tor’s (Chi­na Rail­way) ini­tial struc­tur­al de­signs.

How­ev­er, lat­er on, Nid­co de­cid­ed that the orig­i­nal de­sign ap­proved by CEP was not ad­e­quate enough, es­pe­cial­ly in light of con­cerns about cli­mate change and more pow­er­ful hur­ri­canes.

“CEP’s con­tract was for a par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­od of time to pro­vide this de­sign re­view ser­vice for a par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­od, and be­cause the project was de­layed due to COVID and al­so land ac­qui­si­tion, CEP’s con­tract came to an end, and I’m told by Nid­co that the price that they asked for to con­tin­ue is very high, and Nid­co was un­able to agree on it,” Im­bert ex­plained.

But Im­bert said the costs for de­lays were ex­pect­ed.

“I knew that claims were go­ing to come for de­lays, and I al­so was aware that Nid­co had en­hanced and im­proved the de­sign and con­struc­tion, and the con­trac­tor would need to be paid for that,” he said.

Im­bert said CEP had “signed off on a de­sign that was in­ad­e­quate.”

He al­so said Gov­ern­ment had saved some mon­ey, since the orig­i­nal bud­get for land ac­qui­si­tion was $300 mil­lion but the ac­tu­al pay­ments made to date were $251m, a sav­ings of around $49m.

Kam­la: Colm should re­sign

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, said Im­bert should now step down or be re­moved as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

“He has ab­solute­ly dis­cred­it­ed him­self,” she said.

She said the Cab­i­net note re­vealed Im­bert was ei­ther “an in­com­pe­tent, or a liar.”

“It seems that he had am­ne­sia at Thurs­day’s press­er but re­gained his mem­o­ry by 1 pm on Fri­day. What is al­so con­cern­ing is that every mem­ber of the Cab­i­net must have known about these mas­sive cost over­runs and de­sign is­sues, but they all re­mained qui­et and as­sist­ed in cov­er­ing it up from the pub­lic,” Per­sad Bisses­sar said. She al­so ac­cused Im­bert of mis­lead­ing the pub­lic about sav­ings on land ac­qui­si­tion, not­ing that funds from a $300 mil­lion loan were di­vert­ed to cov­er cost over­runs.

She al­so called for Nid­co chair­man Her­bert George to step down or re­sign as well.

“On­ly last month he told the me­dia that the project was on bud­get; this has now been ex­posed as a lie. He must be re­moved as chair­man of Nid­co,” she said.

Mean­while, for­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, said yes­ter­day he didn’t see a need for Im­bert to re­sign, but he did ac­knowl­edge Im­bert’s cred­i­bil­i­ty could take a hit.

“I think there are a few oth­er ques­tions that have to be an­swered,” Browne said.

“Sim­ple. I don’t think there’s any­thing wrong with an­swer­ing the ques­tions.”

When asked if Im­bert may be hid­ing some of the fig­ures be­cause of an im­pend­ing elec­tion, Browne said, “It is em­bar­rass­ing when one’s mem­o­ry fails in mat­ters such as this, if you take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that the min­is­ter is al­so in a fight with the au­di­tor gen­er­al over a ques­tion of a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with an item in terms of how much rev­enue was ac­tu­al­ly re­ceived. I think that Min­is­ter Im­bert is re­mind­ed that you would have to be a lit­tle bit more pre­cise.”

Sum­ma­ry of Rec­om­men­da­tions (Point 17) of the Cab­i­net note which was ap­proved:

Pay­ment of Vari­a­tions:

US$14.2 mil­lion for vari­a­tions cat­e­go­rized as “ap­proved, in­struct­ed, and an­tic­i­pat­ed” to the con­trac­tor CR­C­C­CL.

Fund­ing source:

US$11.7 mil­lion from the project con­tin­gency fund.

US$2.5 mil­lion from the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions.

Risk Man­age­ment Al­lo­ca­tion:

An ad­di­tion­al US$5.0 mil­lion to be al­lo­cat­ed for un­fore­seen project risks (vari­a­tions), sub­ject to prop­er jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. This is a proac­tive mea­sure to ad­dress any fu­ture risks.

Ad­vance­ment of Claims:

An ad­vance of US$15 mil­lion to CR­C­C­CL to ad­dress cash flow chal­lenges re­lat­ed to pend­ing claims. This is based on NID­CO’s Claims As­sess­ment Re­port and will be sub­ject to le­gal terms and con­di­tions.

NID­CO’s Man­age­ment Fees:

A lump sum pay­ment of TT$10 mil­lion to NID­CO to cov­er Project Man­age­ment Fees for the project’s de­layed time­line, sourced from the Min­istry of Fi­nance bud­get.

Out­stand­ing Pay­ment to ACQ and As­so­ciates:

TT$1.8 mil­lion to be paid to ACQ and As­so­ciates for land ac­qui­si­tion ser­vices. This pay­ment will be sourced from the re­main­ing bal­ance of a TT$300 mil­lion Sco­tia­bank Loan.

Non-ob­jec­tions Pre­vi­ous­ly Grant­ed:

TT$11.5 mil­lion for a con­tract with Acui­tus Caribbean Fa­cil­i­ties Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny for con­struc­tion su­per­vi­sion (to re­place CEP Lim­it­ed).

US$776,244.29 for the ex­ten­sion of con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices by ZABIR 2005 S.L. through De­cem­ber 2025. Both ex­pens­es will be fund­ed un­der the Min­istry’s In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Fund.