Mick­ela Pan­day

When the PNM shut down Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 101-year-old Petrotrin re­fin­ery in 2018, I con­demned the de­ci­sion. A coun­try with our nat­ur­al re­sources, in­dus­tri­al ex­pe­ri­ence and skilled work­force should not aban­don a re­fin­ery that served this na­tion for more than a cen­tu­ry with­out first ex­haust­ing vi­able al­ter­na­tives to pro­tect the in­dus­try and its work­ers.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­demned it too. She called the clo­sure “in­dus­tri­al geno­cide” and said the UNC would have kept the re­fin­ery open, pre­served jobs and re­struc­tured the econ­o­my.

To­day, as Prime Min­is­ter, she is propos­ing to sell Hilton Trinidad, Mag­dale­na Grand and Na­tion­al Quar­ries, while Labid­co is al­so be­ing con­sid­ered for di­vest­ment. Her ex­pla­na­tion is that the State has a poor record of run­ning com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es and that pri­vate-sec­tor in­vest­ment is the an­swer. In Op­po­si­tion, Kam­la un­der­stood the dan­ger of dis­man­tling a na­tion­al as­set. Now she must ex­plain why, when her own Gov­ern­ment faces strug­gling en­ter­pris­es, sell­ing them has be­come such an at­trac­tive so­lu­tion.

The PNM closed the re­fin­ery. The UNC is propos­ing to sell oth­er na­tion­al as­sets. We have changed the Gov­ern­ment, but where is the change in eco­nom­ic think­ing?

I am not ar­gu­ing that the State should keep every busi­ness re­gard­less of per­for­mance. Tax­pay­ers should not sus­tain loss­es in­def­i­nite­ly and those re­spon­si­ble for mis­man­age­ment must an­swer for their fail­ures. State-owned com­pa­nies must be run by com­pe­tent peo­ple ap­point­ed on mer­it, not po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age.

If these com­pa­nies are fail­ing, who is ac­count­able? What has been done to cor­rect the prob­lems? What al­ter­na­tives have been ex­am­ined? Sell­ing a com­pa­ny does not erase the fail­ure that brought it to this point. It may bring in mon­ey, but it can al­so sur­ren­der the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­pair the busi­ness and ben­e­fit from its fu­ture suc­cess.

Con­sid­er Labid­co. Its 407-acre La Brea In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in­cludes the Port of Brighton, in­dus­tri­al lots and in­fra­struc­ture serv­ing en­er­gy-sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ty. This is not sim­ply land on a bal­ance sheet. It is part of our in­dus­tri­al ca­pac­i­ty, as Trinidad and To­ba­go di­ver­si­fies.

Be­fore sell­ing it, the Gov­ern­ment must ex­plain Labid­co’s val­ue to the coun­try be­yond a sale price. What fu­ture does it en­vis­age for La Brea? How will the na­tion­al in­ter­est be pro­tect­ed? Work­ers re­port­ed­ly learned of the pro­pos­al through the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment. That is no way to in­spire con­fi­dence in a de­ci­sion af­fect­ing an en­tire in­dus­tri­al com­mu­ni­ty.

The Hilton trans­ac­tion al­so de­serves scruti­ny. In Sep­tem­ber, the State ac­quired the out­stand­ing shares in Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed, bring­ing the ho­tel un­der full State own­er­ship while Hilton con­tin­ued as man­ag­er. The ac­qui­si­tion was pre­sent­ed as a way to se­cure the ho­tel’s con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion. With­in weeks, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans to sell it. Tax­pay­ers de­serve a clear ex­pla­na­tion of the ac­qui­si­tion’s cost, the strat­e­gy be­hind it and how a sub­se­quent sale will de­liv­er fair val­ue.

Mag­dale­na Grand has faced fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional dif­fi­cul­ties, in­clud­ing the fur­lough­ing of more than 50 em­ploy­ees. Na­tion­al Quar­ries has re­port­ed sub­stan­tial loss­es and re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions. These are se­ri­ous mat­ters, but they are not rea­sons to dis­pose of as­sets with­out show­ing that rea­son­able al­ter­na­tives have been con­sid­ered.

The Prime Min­is­ter has ar­gued that Na­tion­al Quar­ries sells ag­gre­gate for less than it costs to pro­duce. Its chair­man re­port­ed loss­es of $135.8 mil­lion be­tween 2020 and 2025, along­side $154.57 mil­lion in gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions over the Sep­tem­ber year-ends from 2022 to 2025. These fig­ures de­mand an­swers about man­age­ment, costs and pric­ing. They do not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly prove that sell­ing the com­pa­ny is the best course.

We have seen what los­ing na­tion­al in­dus­tries means for or­di­nary peo­ple. The clo­sure of Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed end­ed do­mes­tic sug­ar pro­duc­tion and dev­as­tat­ed work­ers and agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties. Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery shut­down put ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,700 jobs at risk and dam­aged com­mu­ni­ties whose eco­nom­ic lives were tied to the in­dus­try. These de­ci­sions were not just en­tries in cor­po­rate ac­counts. They changed lives and weak­ened pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty.

That is why I con­demned the re­fin­ery clo­sure. Kam­la her­self ar­gued that re­struc­tur­ing was the al­ter­na­tive to shut­ting it down. She can­not now ex­pect the coun­try to ac­cept the sale of oth­er na­tion­al as­sets with­out show­ing that re­form has been prop­er­ly con­sid­ered and that di­vest­ment serves the pub­lic in­ter­est.

A coun­try can­not build pros­per­i­ty by re­peat­ed­ly dis­pos­ing of what it owns. We need prop­er­ly man­aged busi­ness­es, ac­count­able pub­lic of­fi­cials and a se­ri­ous plan to de­vel­op in­dus­tries, cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs and ex­pand do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion. Where a sale is jus­ti­fied, in­de­pen­dent val­u­a­tions, work­er pro­tec­tions and trans­par­ent use of the pro­ceeds must be non-ne­go­tiable.

The Gov­ern­ment must tell the coun­try what will re­place the long-term val­ue of the as­sets it pro­pos­es to sell. If the pro­ceeds mere­ly meet im­me­di­ate spend­ing needs, the mon­ey will even­tu­al­ly be gone, while the coun­try will have sur­ren­dered own­er­ship and fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­demned the clo­sure of Petrotrin and promised a dif­fer­ent ap­proach. She must now show that her Gov­ern­ment of­fers more than the same re­sponse to eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ty un­der a dif­fer­ent par­ty ban­ner.

We can­not keep sell­ing what pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions built and call it progress. Lead­er­ship is not sim­ply de­cid­ing what to sell when a busi­ness strug­gles. It is hav­ing the com­pe­tence to fix what is bro­ken and the vi­sion to build some­thing bet­ter for the gen­er­a­tions that fol­low.

Mick­ela Pan­day is the Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and At­tor­ney at Law