A con­sis­tent theme run­ning through my com­men­taries in the last 30-plus years has been strong and con­sis­tent ad­vo­ca­cy for the di­vest­ment (and pri­vati­sa­tion) of state-owned com­pa­nies in T&T. A re­cur­ring theme in my ear­li­er BG View com­men­taries has been that pri­vatis­ing state en­ter­pris­es (us­ing tem­plates of the ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing of First Cit­i­zens, Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd and Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd) trans­fers wealth from the State di­rect­ly to T&T na­tion­als and lo­cal in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors.

As far back as April 1, 2010, un­der the head­line ‘A man­i­festo for change...and growth,’ I wrote, “For me, the is­sue of di­vest­ment is a make-or-break is­sue. The po­lit­i­cal par­ty that does not make a reg­u­lar, sys­tem­at­ic and pro­grammed pol­i­cy of di­vest­ment (or pri­vati­sa­tion) of state-owned com­pa­nies the cen­tre­piece of the macro-eco­nom­ic ideas in its man­i­festo would not re­ceive any con­sid­er­a­tion from me.

“The par­ty that ex­cludes di­vest­ment from its man­i­festo would be deemed to have struck out, to bor­row an apt base­ball term. In my view, di­vest­ment should be one of the pil­lars of T&T’s fu­ture eco­nom­ic port­fo­lio of ideas...”

That com­men­tary was writ­ten about sev­en weeks be­fore the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion.

So, this col­umn ap­plauds Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and the ad­min­is­tra­tion she leads, for propos­ing to di­vest four state com­pa­nies. She did so in the fea­ture ad­dress at the of­fi­cial sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Mar­riott Ho­tel de­vel­op­ment at Mt. Irvine, To­ba­go on Oc­to­ber 13, 2026.

Fol­low­ing is my tran­scrip­tion of com­ments she made at the cer­e­mo­ny, per­ti­nent to the is­sue of di­vest­ment:

“Chief Sec­re­tary (Far­ley Au­gus­tine) you made a point, and I to­tal­ly agree with you, that the busi­ness of gov­ern­ment is not run­ning ho­tels. So this where pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment is vi­tal.

“Why is a gov­ern­ment run­ning a ho­tel? And that is why we will put out ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est RF­Ps short­ly to di­vest the Mag­dale­na Ho­tel from the gov­ern­ment.

“We al­so in­tend to do a di­vest­ment process for the Hilton Ho­tel.

“You know, I met some in­vestors re­cent­ly. We meet a lot of in­vestors, and there’s great in­ter­est in FDI (for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment) com­ing in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“And we said, you know, there’s a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness where we are say­ing the gov­ern­ment will buy 20 per cent of it, and some pri­vate sec­tor per­son will take the oth­er per­cent­age. The gen­tle­man said that most things the gov­ern­ment in­vests in, they bust.

“True or not true? Look at Mag­dale­na to­day. Why is the gov­ern­ment run­ning a ho­tel and run­ning it to dust, down to the ground?

“And that is not the on­ly thing that we are look­ing to di­vest. We are look­ing for pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment, Mr Aboud. You, your part­ners, and who­ev­er may come.

“So we’re look­ing at the ho­tels. We’re look­ing for di­vest­ment. We’re look­ing for part­ners.

“I’m look­ing to di­vest Na­tion­al Quar­ries. I’ll tell you why. The Gov­ern­ment is run­ning Na­tion­al Quar­ries to dust, to the ground.

“So they pre­pare what is it called, Mooni­lal (a ref­er­ence to the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Roodal Mooni­lal) ag­gre­gate? Yes. So they pre­pare this ag­gre­gate. It costs them $350, but then they sell it for $150. That mak­ing any sense?

“Just doesn’t make any sense. So we’re look­ing to di­vest, as I said, the Mag­dale­na, the Hilton, to di­vest Na­tion­al Quar­ries, and I’m al­so look­ing to di­vest—so you know, any per­son in­ter­est­ed—we want to di­vest Labid­co.

“Why are we run­ning that again? Run­ning it to dust to bust.

“So talk to your friends, your fam­i­lies, pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors. A gov­ern­ment can­not suc­ceed by spend­ing all the mon­ey, cre­at­ing busi­ness­es, cre­at­ing en­ti­ties, and then dust to bust.

“We need to get more pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment, and this is why, Mr Aboud, I wel­come you and your part­ners com­ing in­to this in­vest­ment here in To­ba­go, as we’ve done in Trinidad, and of course the oth­er mat­ters, the EOIs, the RF­Ps com­ing out as we go in­to this new fis­cal year.

“So let’s work to­geth­er in To­ba­go’s in­ter­est, in Trinidad’s in­ter­est, in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­est.

“I said to them this morn­ing to you, side by side we stand, is­lands of the blue Caribbean Sea. Let’s make that part­ner­ship work. These op­por­tu­ni­ties de­pend on part­ner­ships.”

Ques­tions:

1) Fol­low­ing her com­ment on Face­book on June 12, out­lin­ing her per­cep­tion of the “one per cent com­mu­ni­ty,” does the fact that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tend­ed the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Mar­riott de­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go, and en­cour­aged Mr John Aboud and his part­ners to in­vest fur­ther in T&T, in­di­cate a new dis­po­si­tion to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, of which Mr Aboud is a mem­ber?

2) What is the pol­i­cy dri­ving the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment of the four com­pa­nies the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to di­vest?

3) If the pol­i­cy is to di­vest loss-mak­ing com­pa­nies, why is the Gov­ern­ment seek­ing to sell the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach & Golf Re­sort, but there was no men­tion of Caribbean Air­lines Ltd, which re­ceived a to­tal $780.12 mil­lion in di­rect trans­fers, a share­hold­er loan, debt ser­vice pay­ments and prin­ci­pal re­pay­ments in ac­tu­al 2025 ex­pen­di­ture and in the re­vised es­ti­mate for 2026?

4) If the pol­i­cy is to sell state-owned ho­tels, why was the prof­itably op­er­at­ed Hy­att Re­gency, left off the list?

5) If it is the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to sell the land­lord of the La Brea In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Labid­co, the La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, does the State in­tend to keep con­trol of Plipde­co, the land­lord of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, which is pub­licly list­ed and 51 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole?

6) Why did the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounce the di­vest­ment of Na­tion­al Quar­ries, when she must know the com­pa­ny has not pro­duced au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials since 2021, and that its cur­rent chair­man, Ash­mead Ghany, de­clared at a Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee hear­ing in March that the com­pa­ny had record­ed a to­tal loss of $135.8 mil­lion be­tween 2020 and 2025? The com­pa­ny re­ceived a trans­fer of $50.2 mil­lion in 2026 and is due to re­ceive $55 mil­lion in 2027.

7) Back­ing up what the Prime Min­is­ter said at the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny in To­ba­go on Oc­to­ber 13, Mr Ghany said Na­tion­al Quar­ries’ av­er­age cost of pro­duc­ing lime­stone is around $325, but the sell­ing price of lime­stone, which is crush­er, is be­tween $150 and $155 per tonne.

Has the Gov­ern­ment com­mis­sioned a di­ag­nos­tic analy­sis of why the com­pa­ny’s av­er­age cost of pro­duc­tion is so out of line with mar­ket prices?

8) As a pro­duc­er of lime­stone and ag­gre­gate, Na­tion­al Quar­ries is par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ing. It is the largest quar­ry op­er­a­tion in T&T. In the con­text of the Gov­ern­ment’s Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, which aims to gen­er­ate 129 ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture and de­vel­op­ment projects across 13 de­vel­op­ment nodes in the next decade, what is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a ma­jor sup­pli­er of ce­ment to the lo­cal mar­ket gets con­trol of Na­tion­al Quar­ries and what would be the con­se­quence of that?

9) Would the Gov­ern­ment be pre­pared to sell Na­tion­al Quar­ries for a nom­i­nal amount, if there is a com­mit­ment by the pur­chas­er to in­vest mil­lions of dol­lars in­to the com­pa­ny to in­tro­duce new tech­nol­o­gy that would low­er the cost of pro­duc­tion?

10) Most of the past di­vest­ments have been of pub­lic com­pa­nies, which en­sures some mea­sure of trans­paren­cy with re­gard to share price, val­u­a­tion, fu­ture earn­ings etc. Will this time be dif­fer­ent?

11) Would the Gov­ern­ment’s di­vest­ment of the four state com­pa­nies be gov­erned by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion or would that over­sight be scup­pered by call­ing these sales pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships?

Side­bar

The Mar­riott ho­tel de­vel­op­ment com­pris­es a 200-room ho­tel with meet­ing rooms and restau­rants, along with 67 res­i­den­tial units com­pris­ing bun­ga­lows, vil­las and du­plex­es on 28 acres of state lands at Rocky Point.

The project de­vel­op­er is Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels, a com­pa­ny chaired by busi­ness­man John Aboud and the con­struc­tion cost was es­ti­mat­ed at $540 mil­lion at a cer­e­mo­ny in To­ba­go last week. The com­pa­ny has a 99-year lease on the land.

John Aboud, the chair­man of Su­pe­ri­or Ho­tels, first pub­licly dis­cussed the Mar­riott project in To­ba­go fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial project un­veil­ing on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2021, at the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort. The Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) was grant­ed by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty in May 2026, clear­ing the way for con­struc­tion to be­gin. The con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to take two-and-a-half years

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar told the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny, ”Pro­ject­ed an­nu­al re­sort rev­enue of US$19 mil­lion, com­bined with bench­marks of rough­ly $2 spent out­side for every dol­lar spent on a room, which will point to about 30 to 40 mil­lion US dol­lars, TT 200-275 mil­lion dol­lars in an­nu­al vis­i­tor spend­ing.”