POETIC JUSTICE FOR JINDAL

TAXPAYERS are dishing out $12 million to a Canadian company to evaluate bids for the lease of Petrotrin.

The Government has permitted Naveen Jindal, the billionaire industrialist, to skip that process.

That means the qualified evaluator does not know how Jindal measures up against nine formal bidders.

Those contenders – all local groups with foreign partners – spent large sums in preparing their bids, including details on funding, source of feedstock, marketing, etc.

Jindal did not have to fork out those funds, and merely relied on his professional history.

In a land with a procurement law, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley brought Jindal into the mix after a reference from his Venezuelan amigos, and with no formal tender.

Jindal leapfrogged to the top of the heap, which included long-standing industrial firms.

Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union, in its third bid, is near insolvency from fees associated with its previous official tenders.

Jindal’s withdrawal from the Petrotrin deal is poetic justice of vice being punished and virtue rewarded.

As for Rowley’s injured innocence over the loss of a potential investor, the raw facts do not line up with him.

His administration has a wretched track record on direct foreign investments (FDIs), from the summary departure of ArcelorMittal, a major foreign exchange earner, to restaurant chain Pollo Tropical to transport company Uber.

A United Nations agency said Trinidad and Tobago was the only Caribbean country with a net flight of investments in 2022, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

There was a net departure of US $917 million in investments that year.

Ease-of-Doing-Business, a World Bank benchmark, says it takes 254 days for an investor to get a construction permit, 61 days for an electricity service, 77 days to register a property, and three and a half years to enforce contracts.

With that red tape, the crime epidemic, and the collapse in natural gas production, FDIs have abandoned T&T.

The authorities have made no reasonable efforts to create an enabling environment for investors, and are apparently relying on casual references, like Jindal’s.  

Rowley’s attack on political opponents for Jindal’s withdrawal is a road-testing of his election campaign, in which he will unleash on critics for the economic state of the land.

It is yet another false narrative.

The objectors to Jindal short-circuiting the system did a patriotic duty.

I stand with them.