Imbert: Government will pay the bill

Speaker Bridgid Annisette- George permitted the matter to be debated as matter of urgent public importance.

Imbert said Petrotrin has lost ,“$800 million in 2015, $600 million in 2016, and it owes Government $1.2 billion in unpaid royalties and taxes.” Imbert disclosed he met earlier in the day with Petrotrin President Fitzroy Harewood who has informed him that “Petrotrin was challenged to offer anything on cost items, and has come to the Government for direction.” Imbert said he discussed with Harewood possible scenarios with respect to this matter because Petrotrin was integral to the credit rating of the country. Imbert said Harewood was adamant that, “whatever we settle on, whether it is five percent, three percent, ten percent, or one percent, whatever it is, we will require the support of the Ministry of Finance, either by way of a direct subvention to pay the increased annual cost of wages and salaries, or and back pay, or by way of a Government guarantee of a loan for Petrotrin to borrow (thereby) increasing our debt to GDP ratio and affecting the credit worthiness of TT.”

Imbert said while he was in the US last July on a road show to raise US$1 billion, every investor asked what Government was going to do about “Petrotrin’s very difficult financial situation, and what we were going to do about the US$850 million bond that Petrotrin has to pay in 2019.”

He said under the former Kamla Persad- Bissessar administration, Imbert said that Petrotrin did not pay royalties and taxes when oil was US$100 a barrel. Under the former government, Imbert said oil production fell from 64,000 barrels a day down to 42,000 barrels a day because, “they took no steps to deal with asset integrity and the made no capital investment in infrastructure causing a significant reduction in production.”

In addition, Imbert said oil prices last year dropped from US$100 a barrel down to below $30 a barrel so that the revenue of two years ago which was in excess of $25 billion a year was now down to half of that. Imbert said Petrotrin told him yesterday that they have decided to resume the quarterly payment of royalties and taxes, no matter how difficult the situations are. “They will not however, be able to pay the $1.2 billion owing in arrears at this time,”he said.

Imbert said all of this could have been avoided, if the previous government had settled the increase for the period now under conciliation. However Imbert said the Persad- Bissessar regime was spiteful to the OWTU and did not arrive at agreements for State Enterprises because the Movement for Social Justice which represented the bulk of the union’s membership had severed its relationship with the coalition government which was the first to offer them “zero, zero, zero percent” increase in wages and salaries in their negotiations