what kinda assness i just read?
this is an article from the T&T Guardian that was in the Business Guardian section last week that address some of the stuff that the Jamaican woman carrying on about:
http://www.guardian.co.tt/bussguardian3.htmlWho understands Jamaicans?
ON a Jamaican radio station on Monday, one of the hosts asked me what I thought about the trade war that some elements in the north Caribbean country (including the editorial writers of a major newspaper) are pushing their government to declare on T&T.
It is quite understandable that some Jamaicans are hurt by T&T’s apparent inability to fulfil its intention to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Jamaica by 2009.
The LNG would lower Alcoa’s cost of production at its alumina refinery in Clarendon and as a result of the cogeneration of electricity, some of the LNG will be passed through to Jamaica’s electricity grid, lowering the cost of production in the wider economy.
So I do understand Jamaica’s position on this issue.
What I do not understand is the seeming widespread belief in Jamaica that Prime Minister Patrick Manning and National Gas Company (NGC) president Frank Look Kin are being economical with the truth when they attempt to explain why it would not be possible for T&T to supply LNG to Jamaica in two years time.
The Jamaicans who are commenting on this issue in the newspapers and on radio stations appear not to understand some of the basics of the LNG business.
They appear not to understand that Atlantic LNG, the company that produces LNG in Trinidad, is a commercial entity, that LNG is an extremely capital intensive business that deals in long-term contracts and that T&T is a minority shareholder in the business. State-owned NGC holds a ten per cent stake in Train I and an 11 per cent stake in Train IV and no equity in Trains II and III.
The Jamaicans appear not to understand that the natural gas that is liquefied comes from offshore platforms and the enterprise of discovering natural gas and transporting it by pipeline from offshore fields to Point Fortin is an expensive and risky business. And a business in which T&T is the junior partner in all things except tax collection.
It is this obvious lack of understanding that led an editorial writer in the Gleaner last week to conclude that the Manning administration was “clearly unwilling to take the kind of political decision that would be required to meet its obligation to a single market partner with which it enjoys a US$500 million trade surplus.”
The sentiment in the editorial is that the T&T Cabinet should breach long-term supply contracts with companies which are paying the market price for LNG to satisfy Jamaica, which wishes to pay less than the market price. The editorial went on to add that Atlantic LNG “prefers to meet contractual obligations in the United States and Europe.” It is beyond belief (to borrow from the title of VS Naipaul’s best non-fiction work) that a company and a country should be vilified for preferring to meet contractual obligations and vilified, as well, for failing to achieve its undertakings in non-binding MOUs—such as the ones with Jamaica.
It is almost as if Jamaica is doing T&T a favour by buying petroleum products (about 60 per cent of the total trade) and food and drink (about 40 per cent) from this country.
This country’s business community (and the Guardian’s editorial position is included here) has been maligned in the worst way by editorial writers, columnists and other commentators in Jamaica.
In newspapers and on radio talk shows in the last three weeks, T&T’s business community has been called “insular and selfish,” interested only in plundering Jamaica’s wealth, jingoistic and suffering from “economic myopia.”
The Jamaican government and people have been portrayed as rolling out the red carpet for T&T investors and bending over backwards to facilitate exports by T&T’s productive sector.
The evidence that is cited to prove that the Jamaica government has facilitated T&T firms is the fact that Trinidad firms and products have proliferated in the Jamaican market.
It is being said in Jamaica that while the country has bent over backwards to facilitate Trinidad firms, this country has used non-tariff barriers to block the establishment of Jamaican companies here.
Therefore, the perception that is being spread in Kingston is that T&T businessmen are privateers or marauders just waiting to pounce on any available “meat” and being encouraged to do so by a Jamaica government which epitomises the “true spirit” of Caricom and the CSME.
If you are as amazed and confounded as I am at the success of such a flagrant attempt to re-write very recent history between T&T and Jamaica, raise your hand.
Clearly, there are those in Jamaica who have not paid enough attention to economic and financial events in their own country in the last decade.
Some people choose to ignore the fact that Jamaica’s indigenous financial institutions went into melt-down mode a decade ago and that as a result, the Jamaican government felt it had to intervene to maintain confidence in the financial system.
That intervention cost the Jamaican people close to US$2 billion—money which the then PJ Patterson administration had to borrow.
As a result of the melt down and the intervention, investors from throughout the Caribbean were invited to save Jamaica. RBTT invested US$33 million to acquire Union Bank. TCL made an initial investment of US$29 million to buy the Jamaica government’s 43 per cent stake in Caribbean Cement. TCL also assumed US$100 million in debt and has made additional capital and equity investments in the Jamaican cement company.
Guardian Holdings acquired three companies. Sagicor bought Life of Jamaica for about US$350 million. Butch Stewart’s bought the Jamaica government’s majority stake in the 237-room Sandals Ocho Rios for US $14 million. Michael Lee Chin bought NCB Jamaica.
In other words, as a result of the financial melt-down ten or 11 years ago, the Jamaica government had to raise money by selling state-owned assets as well as borrow money to bail out financial institutions whose owners got rich by borrowing short and lending long.
Maybe there is a message and a warning in there somewhere for us here.
©2005-2006 Trinidad Publishing Company Limited
