Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability the all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Good morning. Good morning. 30 after the hour of 8:00'. Clock. Welcome back to Freedom 106.5 FM. We turn our attention now to our business chambers as they welcomed budget measures. They call for action as well. On page 12 of the Guardian of the People this morning we have several business leaders here to talking about the budget and weighing in on it. And one that we have in studio with us or online with us is the greatest San Fernando Chamber of Commerce President Kiran Singh, no stranger to this frequency and the morning rumble as well. Good morning to you President Singh.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Good morning, David. It's really a pleasure to be on 106.5 freedom. And of course good morning to Trinidad and Tobago.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: As we get right into the crux of our post budget conversations, we are seeing several initiatives being put forward by this government. What are the concerns of the Greater Chamber? I mean there is initiatives coming forward to the San Fernando area to develop that area no doubt would increase with job functions, job stability in the communities as well. What are some of the measures that you think this budget has put forward that has any concern for the Chamber and why praise some of the measures on the onset rather than see the rollout?
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Yes, good morning again.
The budget did speak to a wide ranging areas of responsibility that the Hon. Minister of Finance set out yesterday, of course with specific reference to San Fernando. He did mention the oil refinery. Of course. This is ongoing conversation that we've been having.
We see that a net foreign exchange enough for not only the southern region of Trinidad, but of course the entire country, it can be a net foreign exchange. You know, we can reduce the demand for foreign exchange once that oil finally started. And of course we agree that it has to be started on a phased in basis. It's not like a car engine where you can just turn the key and it will start.
And once we start going plant to plant, we will start reducing that demand for foreign exchange and of course we will create employment.
We will also have increased demand for the downstream industries that relied so heavily on the operation of the refinery before it was shut down some years ago. And this of course will cause further employment, further activity in the commercial sector in the southern region of Trinidad and bring back activity to San Fernando, Marabella, Gasparillo. All these communities were hard hit after the closure of the refinery.
The minister also mentioned the waterfront development project which was heavily identified as an area of investment by the honorable Prime Minister late last year. And we see that some Work was started on the waterfront within the last month and clearing of the area.
And that infrastructure development can bring not only local investment, but foreign direct investment which we desperately need to get commercial activity going in. This is a new economic mega frontier for San Fernando and the southwest peninsula. Because we have the potential to bring in cruise ships, the yachties, hotel development, housing hotels, the amphitheater setting. There are so many positives. The orange economy benefit restaurants, the food and beverage industry.
It's a win win situation for the private sector and the state and the public. Private partnerships that they refer to can of course engage the private sector in contributing and of course benefiting the sooner we start, start off with the infrastructure development on the waterfront.
The Minister also mentioned tourism and what we were heartened to know and of course the country would know that through the Trade Ministry they revamped the processing time from days and hours to literally minutes for yachties to enter our shores. We all know that we benefit tremendously from our geographic location. We just out of the hurricane belt, we are pretty safe from earthquakes. And of course the weather patterns are favorable to us. And of course all the islands up the Caribbean chain benefit from the yachties and we can do the same.
So that with the oncoming winter season, I'm sure we're going to see an influx of yachties to the country.
And of course we welcome them to San Fernando as well, where we, you know, we have souvenir items to offer. We have the eco tourism product, the mud volcanoes, San Fernando hill, the eco trails.
The south region of Trinidad has been unexplored largely. And we can engage through the ministry to have the yachties, have the cruise ships come to San Fernando and let's engage them in the same way that they would in Port of Spain and even up the islands. We have the space, we have the safe water harbor for them to dock here.
And what we did so that it brings into the wider scope of things the health sector. Because the setting up of the port health office in Chacaramas has reduced the time. And the public may not be aware of this to such a large extent, but this is going to have a long term effect for us in foreign exchange generation and employment.
Because the other islands benefit. They rely totally on tourism, that is their gdp, nothing else. They have no natural resources to rely on.
We still have the energy sector, we still have reliant on the sale of oil and gas.
That is a finite supply deal eventually run out. We know that we're going to benefit from this when it comes on stream next year. And of course, the government being cash trapped and financially challenged, they would have put certain measures in place which some people may not like and may not agree with.
But until that time, where they can generate further revenue, some of these measures have to be taken for them to pay the bills. Salaries and wages still have to be paid. They still have to service their loans. And of course we still have infrastructure development to continue to push the country forward. From where we stand right now, as
[00:06:32] Speaker B: we look at the. I don't mean to cut you, but as we look at the natural resources, natural gas and all those things that you think we earned at all in closing that refinery, I mean, we have countries that hydrocarbons and natural resources eludes them. Let's look at Jamaica. But Jamaica has a very successful refining plant that takes natural gas, refines it and then sells it back. So did we by closing the refinery, was the refinery truth and in fact hemorrhaging our economy? And if so, why didn't we hold those accountable for the dispensation of the US Funds, hold them to task for it?
[00:07:11] Speaker A: I think, Davion, in retrospect, when we look at the overall operation of the refinery, it employed several thousand workers. And by extension these several thousand workers had families who depended on them for the bread on their tables.
And also there were the several dozen downstream companies that formed the industry that surrounded the Petroton refinery that also generated employment and foreign exchange and revenue for the country that disappeared overnight when the refinery was shut down at that it was generated foreign exchange. There's no doubt about that.
The only statistics we can. You know, there's a saying about statistics and dam statistics and lying statistics, but certainly the refinery was generated in foreign exchanges.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: There's no doubt about that when it comes to Constantine. Well, go ahead, go ahead.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: If we were to compare how much it is costing us to import all the products we are that that we need in this country versus how much refinery is producing, what is the cost benefit analysis between what we imported and what we were producing locally and in some cases being able to export some of it.
The refinery was heavily underutilized.
Shouldn't we have been looking at ways to increase oil production? We have these large players coming into the, into the market now who seem very excited about expanding the Trinidad market, which is, and Guyana is our closest neighbor. This refinery could have been retooled to refine Guyana's oil at some point. There was the argument that we not we may not be able to refine the oil that comes out of Guyana. But certainly we could have done some modification to the plant and equipment. We have enough technology and human resource skills to see how we could have benefited from the huge fines of oil coming out of Guyana.
And look where they were. You know, David, I don't like to say this but some years ago we used to laugh at Guyana.
Now Guyana is laughing at us.
Who we have to blame for this. The tragedy of opinion that is that has enveloped us in the Caribbean context of where we are.
You know, the Caribbean islands didn't like Trinidad and Tobago. We were oil rich then we found gas.
What did we do with the windfall of revenue that came into the coffers and the treasury of this country? David, where did the money go and where was the picture?
[00:09:58] Speaker B: That's a question that keeps coming up time and time again. We would have had oil booms as we it's fondly called during my school days. Even now as an adult into the media world, I understand we had economic flourishment in the country. People, you know, money was there and then it slowly dissipated and disappeared. We had accusations of hemorrhaging by some of the local enterprises. We look at BWIA for example, where bailouts came out at least twice in one year.
The administration under Patrick Manning, it had to be restructured. But we didn't close BWIA down. I mean as a matter of fact we while we rebranded the company to Caribbean Airlines to cal and we look at hold persons accountable, switch around, deal with checks and balances, get the accounting up, put goals in place. KPIs were there because if you buy a ticket, it still says bwe, it still says bw. Your flight number is still there. Bw. So one lens to understand. Was it truly a hemorrhaging of what they are assessing it to be of the economy? Or was it just a goal to destabilize a union that was relentless on the backs of government forever and a day having the plant running on a go slow, stretching their hands out for monies and extra things continuously. Was that the real cause or was it to hide? Was it something more sinister to hide and protect those in authority, those those that were charged with responsibility to govern the plant for their wastage and mismanagement of funds. What was the real reason and is it practical Kiran for us to restart that refinery today?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: David, that is a very good question. The experts in the field will tell you that after so many years, the mothballing of the refinery, how it was shut down with sort of immediate touch of a button for want of A better phrase.
How much was equipment damaged? Can the plants be restarted? How much will it cost to restart it? It's going to be a very expensive undertaking and that's why we don't have a lineup of persons rushing to this refinery. There's also aged equipment that we have.
So whoever is coming in there has to be very. Will be very careful, of course and how they're going to invest, how we're going to generate money from the equipment because we. This is almost in a few days it will be eight years since the refinery was shut down.
Eight years is a long time. If you could run the analogy to a car engine, if you park up a car for eight years, you're not going to full gas in it and expect the car to start. It's just not going to happen.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Not even your lawnmower.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: And is the same thing with the
[00:12:47] Speaker B: driving, not even your lawnmower. And I was just about to really say great mind things alive. I was just about to allude to the, the fact that a car engineering, you know, and if. Let's bring it closer to home.
Check your human body if you do not utilize your legs. One study was showing me, I was looking at it and a guy was challenged somewhere in the, in the some other part of Europe. I would never do something like this. Opted to use a wheelchair for a year, just use the wheelchair.
He had to learn to walk all over again.
He abandoned his legs to see what it was like to be in the life of a disabled person, but took it a bit too far.
And if that happens to the human body now, I can't say if the science behind it was fact or fiction. But I read the story, I looked at the article and I was like is it possible?
And with the refinery, they're now talking about restarting it on a phased basis.
Now that may seem practical because. Because as Yuri mentioned, we're dealing with a refinery that was already functioning on aged equipment and now eight years later, aged, dormant equipment.
So it's not just aged and keep running and you lube it with oil and you keep going. It has been left dormant for just shy of two years, for a decade now we have a company coming in and want to take this refinery. Are we going to see immediate benefits of it now if the they decide to. How is it going to affect the local domestic market if they truly go through with this plan and restart this refinery in a phase basis?
It's a loaded question, but
[00:14:33] Speaker A: we've been thinking about this for a long time.
If they were the government were to sign on the dotted line today that refinery sold or leased or whatever it is to whoever it is.
One plant, one single plant cannot start tomorrow.
It will require some. Some work to get it in a. In a position where it can start producing some sort of product, whether it is refinery oil or gas or diesel or kerosene, whatever, jet fuel, whatever it is.
And. But what the benefit is that people don't realize, those who are not in the industry is that when that signature happens on the bottom line by the government, the downstream industries will start re employing people.
The refinery itself will start re employing people. Because we have to get the work done.
Planting and there will be investment in plants and equipment to facilitate that. The sale of these products, the maintenance, the security of refinery. All these things have gone to the. Even the janitorial services, the landscaping, all these things are part of the refinery operation that people don't. We only think about refining oil. But there's a lot more that goes into the process. The fire services station is there. You have administrative staff. That is huge employment that will happen, that will happen overnight.
So we will have immediate local revenue generation and employment creation or the recreation of past employment from the refinery filtering downwards.
And that is how we will see some activity coming straight out of the refinery, even though it does not start operating right away.
The investors and the commercial enterprises that are involved in the energy product of this country will become alive and will engage new contractors, new processes and start that process. We have so many human, our human resource capital going Guyana and they're going to go to Suriname because that is where all these discoveries are being made.
And then we have the new entrepreneurs coming out. The youth who are now learning this type of economic activity will want to get engaged and they can go into entrepreneurship as opposed to looking for the government for a job and a handout because the government doesn't have that money to keep this welfare state kind of mindset in people's minds that they don't have to work, they have to work. That is the reality in which we face.
And even when we benefit from the.
When the offshore gas fields come into operation starting next year, even before we start getting that first feed, it will employment will going to be created. People will be able to get the convenient confidence to start investing in the economy, but locally and foreign, because they will realize, okay, that dream is our reality. The gas is coming and people will start wanting to benefit from what we offer.
You know, and it's just some time after one year, one year, David, one
[00:18:02] Speaker B: year I am just very happy that you were able to identify some very key areas of domestic employment that will benefit and come on stream immediately upon signing on the dotted line.
And this that will be coming on stream mind you is in preparation for the first hydrocarbons, minerals and materials to pass through any of the pipelines.
I want people to understand that. So while 2027, the latter part, something that we were told by the last administration, now this one continuing with that trajectory, the what President Kiran is saying, these are the things that will happen first. So we already going to see an expenditure bill before we can generate one single cent of income for the refinery, new refineries, restart. And I think that was a very, very important message to send. So while persons are all up in arms, we are not going to see are generated income first before we spend money. But there's a whole saying and I'm quite certain that you are familiar with it. President Singh in order to make money you have to spend money, can open a supermarket and then when you open the grocery store, all your shelves empty and your first customers come, you take their money to buy this stuff and when they go on you buy it and then they come back and pick it up, you have to open the store and stock it so you put out to get in. So I don't want nobody. And I said that so persons wouldn't call me saying well look how much money we had to spend and we inside a generator send this government to know what they're doing.
Don't say that.
I don't want to hear that because it does not make sense. And I'm very grateful that Kiran was able to touch on that this morning.
Now as we continue for the next seven minutes in our conversation, let's look at crime initiatives for the San Fernando area. No doubt there was an expectation to strengthen the security infrastructure across the country.
But have you looked at the needs of the San Fernando area?
What will be immediately necessary to get a handle on the crime situation and protect the businesses in your area?
[00:20:38] Speaker A: We have been having ongoing conversations with the ever changing senior superintendent in charge of San Fernando. They change ever so often after we develop good working relationships with them. But we continue to thrive. We continue to push for what we expect for the business community which we continue to say is increased foot patrols, increased vehicular patrols. It creates a psychological impact on the criminally minded that there's a lethal force that should not be played with when they decide to commit their crimes.
And this argument about police brutality and all this kind of thing what about the effects it has on the victims? I don't hear anybody talking about the victims of the brutality, whether it's unfortunate murder, rape, robbery, the threat of violence.
Where are the voices that should be speaking to those. There's no voice for them.
But always somebody's talking about the criminal and the. The boy was a good boy and yeah, we know he was always good until he pick up a gun and kill somebody.
So I don't know where his mind went when that happened.
But what we were very happy to see was one of the first police posts that were that was opened on the new initiatives of announced by the government was the Turuba flyover, which is one of the main entry and exit points into the city of San Fernando.
You know, we keep saying that the roadblocks that the TTPS has all over the country at any time, day or night, is not enough to quell the crime wave that we are facing. Yes, we noticed that the crime statistics show that there's been a drop in serious crime.
I must say that TTPS does a good job in south and southwestern divisions in the country when compared to the statistics that we see in other parts of the country.
But more than that, we want to see the GPS advance technologically. Start using drone. The drone application is being done successfully in other countries. Why are we not employing more of that in our own country?
A lot of intelligent youths know how to use the drone. Certainly the police can engage in and it's an inexpensive type of tool that is effective.
This has been used to fight wars. This is where we reach. We don't have foot shoulders running around in other parts of the world killing people. We have drones that are doing that very saving the lives of the soldiers.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Very, very true.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Why can't we do that? Why we can't do that here?
[00:23:22] Speaker B: I like that point. We don't have.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: It costs less than a vehicle, it costs less than a helicopter.
But so what we want to see, and we keep saying that is the police need to work beyond the 8 to 4, Monday to Friday because stores want to open beyond late evenings into the night. They want to open on Sundays, public holidays. And those are the times the police are not as present as we would like them to be.
And we have many instances, not only San Fernando, but outside of San Fernando where the police, the bandits, that is when they attack the buildings because how much security these youth, they don't have, they have no respect for the security cameras.
Bugla proof they cut it through.
That doesn't stop them when they decide they're going to rob a place.
But the physical presence of the police has a different connotation to them that we would.
We have been also suggesting that a library post at on Library Corner, yes, the police station is on the Promenade, which is a few meters away. But on the library corners, where there's a hub of transportation, all the schools are there, the churches are close by and that is where the protection is immediate.
Because if there's a rubber in the middle of High street from the Promenade, the distance from the Library Corner to the, to the. To the middle of High street will take seconds as opposed to because of the traffic from the Promenade to High street or Coffee street or Sipara street, because Library Corner is in the middle of all these commercial streets that depend on the livelihood for their workers and the businesses.
So it's important and I think that the TTPS can do that and we will be better for it in San Fernando.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: In conclusion, and I am grateful that you mentioned that because two things came to mind. One, opening business, taking us from third world, I don't want to say second, but bringing us to football. Because let's look at the stats in terms of the working class in Trinidad and Tobago we have the larger percentage hitting you 8 to 4, 6 to 6, 7 to 7, 9 to 5 during the day, seldom having a day off in the week, most on a weekends and then on a public holiday where they can move around and monies can be spent. Those are the times when stores are closed. You mentioned not opening too late because by 4:00pm 5:00 clock your car get in and I'm just calling a company, Lucy, a car running to the.
Excuse me, to Daisy's Clothing Cloth store because if you walk through south by time five o', clock, unless it's Christmas where they go until seven, eight, everything closing. I often wonder to myself have the chambers, not Jesse sand, the Greater San Fernando, have they looked at having discussions where employees work on a shift basis? So you keep your business open until 9pm just for argument's sake, the supermarkets on the east west corridor, some of them do it, but you have your staff coming in on a rotational basis so one particular employee doesn't feel the brunt from open business at 7 you get to open 7, prepare for open at 8 and go until 10 in the night. Just saying. Allowing commuters and shoppers to benefit from this. You know, I like the idea, but you have highlighted security concerns and my final thought to you is when it comes to inclusion and conversation and consultation with government have the different chambers, including yours, have you all collaborative, gotten together and had a meeting, stakeholders meeting with the Honorable Dave Tanku before this budget was finalized?
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Oh yes, definitely. On several occasions we have spoken to the honorable minister about several concerns, initiatives, programs that we would like to see implemented any budget. And he has been, he has been open to actually visiting the different areas of the country as opposed to us visiting him in his office to show that to demonstrate not only to the business community but wider public at large that he's willing to listen to what everyone has to say and what they can contribute to having a better budget for this year and of course for future financial appropriation presentations.
And we acknowledge that effort that he put out and also other ministers and MPs did the same.
I know about southern Trinidad, I can't say for the rest of the country, but certainly we did have several conversations in southern Trinidad concerning the budget. So I think it was by and large fruitful that we were able to have the air of the finance minister.
This has been somewhat of a challenge in the past, so we remain grateful for that.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: I thank you, President Singh, for taking the time out and chatting with me this morning. As the post budget conversations continue in the coming days, no doubt we would see see what those challenges are as we go through with a fine teat comb some of the initiatives put forward by government and that of the opposition and the wider population. So we will probably talk again in the coming months before Christmas as you prepare for Christmas and the shopping experience by our customers and commuters. Thank you again and have a wonderful day ahead of you, sir.
Take care.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Thank you, David.
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