NEWS
$HADY DEALS
Slamming Budget 2017 as a “colossal failure”, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday hit Government’s proposed sale of State-assets describing it as a tangled web meant to enrich friends of the Government, who occupy interlocking directorates straddling both the public and private sectors. She kicked off the Lower House debate on the Budget presented last Friday by Finance Minister Colm Imbert. The Minister, talking to reporters during the tea-break, totally rejected her allegation of impropriety in his proposed sale of shares in First Citizens Bank (FCB) and TTNGL (Phoenix Park Gas Processors), a subsidiary of the National Gas Company. Alleging a Government plot to create an “Ultra Elitist State”, Persad-Bissessar said these share-offerings will help only big investors but not “John Public” and “Dulharie Public”. She urged that these sales not proceed until current procurement legislation is proclaimed and said she saw no good reason to give special access to existing shareholders. Saying both sets of shares are very valuable and were oversubscribed in an Initial Public Offering (IPO) done under her administration, she said the offerings were much more wider than this new offering now proposed by Imbert. The FCB sale was three times oversubscribed and private persons sought 43 million shares when only seven million were offered to them, she related. Read more here
‘God took our Sumintra away’
Security cameras from Sumintra Samai’s home captured her finals moments before she was impaled by protruding steel rods from an unfinished box drain at John Peter Road, Charlieville. The woman was picking ochros in her garden three feet away from her home when she suddenly fell, the video shows. Relatives who spoke to the T&T Guardian yesterday, a day after the 62-year-old woman was cremated, described the incident as a “freak accident.” One said: “Probably God was ready for her.” Earlier reports had stated Samai was impaled after she fell while crossing the unfinished box drain from which numerous steel rods protruded. The relative said Samai remained in the drain for 45 minutes bleeding from her injuries before help came. The steel rod went through her shoulder area and exited in the region of her neck. Read more here
Major Pains for Citizens
AN unassuming, sunny day in Trinidad and Tobago took a shocking climatic turn around midday yesterday that left much of Trinidad under flood for hours, communities in the south without electricity and five fire officers recovering from electrocution. Reports from around the country are that close to noon, citizens noticed the seemingly sudden appearance of dark, heavy clouds. Many on social media said they noted the change of weather and prepared for a rainy afternoon. None however anticipated the extent to which the showers and winds that followed would have affected the country—including a lightning storm that knocked out most of South Trinidad's power supply, up to a reported five feet of flood water in some areas and the near-deaths of five fire officers as they tried to rescue commuters stranded on the Priority Bus Route. Read more here
POLITICS
Mayor wants Chaguanas to be test piece for property tax collection
Chaguanas Mayor, Gopaul Boodhan, has called on Government to use the central Trinidad borough as a”pilot project” and allow it to collect the property tax for the development of the borough. “With the impending Local Government reform and the collection of the property tax, we in Chaguanas would like to see a pilot project launched in Chaguanas, a lot of money is being collected from the property tax and it should be used to redound to the benefit of our burgess,” Boodhan said, adding, “through this initiative we at the borough corporation can have more autonomy which would be of greater benefit to the Chaguanas community.” He said the monies could be used for garbage collections, the rehabilitation of roads and drains and other minor infrastructure projects, including traffic management and social programmes. Boodhan was delivering opening remarks at the Chaguanas Chamber of Industry & Commerce, [CCIC] post Budget Public Discussion, titled “Maintaining Economic Stability and Sustainability”, at the Chaguanas Borough Corporation Auditorium, Cumberbatch Street, Chaguanas on Wednesday night. He said a number of people had voiced concerns regarding the reimplementation of the property tax as certain areas could pay lower property taxes due to security concerns. Read more here
Probe sale of TTNGL now
Probe it, Prime Minister! With that demand yesterday, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar called on Government to halt the sale of assets of Trinidad and Tobago NGL and First Citizens Holdings Ltd — proposed in the 2017 budget — following concerns about alleged conflict of interest in the issue. “This appears to be a financial transaction designed by a few to benefit a few at the expense of honest, law-abiding tax-paying citizens... I challenge the PM to directly treat with this matter, publicly and transparently and not allow it to go the way of the Malcolm Jones write-off,” Persad-Bissessar said in her budget reply. “The case threatens to be bigger, involving billions of State assets and what appears to be a network of wheeling and dealing that goes on in the boardrooms of high rolling friends and financiers and seems to reach right into the Cabinet...I expect this matter will be developed further in legal action which I am researching.” Read more here
‘Kamla wasted time on a figment of her imagination’
Finance Minister Colm Imbert yesterday said he was “shocked” by the boldfaceness of Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar's claim of conflict of interest with the Phoenix Park IPO given the First Citizens IPO scandal during her tenure. Noting the First Citizens matter is before the Director of Public Prosecutions to determine whether criminal charges laid against directors of the bank appointed by the United National Congress (UNC), Imbert slammed: “I find it scandalous with that history for her to come and talk about corruption in the IPO... I just find it so politically hypocritical, it's shocking, I'm shocked. “But be that as it may, when the FCB shares were put out for sale and the Phoenix Park shares were put out for sale, people bought them, so companies bought them, individuals bought them, and these people would now be existing shareholders and as I said at most ten per cent of the shares that would now be offered in the second public offering will be given to individuals and each one of them will be limited with a cap,” said Imbert. Read more here
BUSINESS
Bankers: FATF more pressing than FATCA
The Financial Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) legislation might be dominating headlines but some bankers believe that a more pressing concern is TT’s risk of being put back on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list for failure to implement adequate anti-money laundering and terrorism financing (AML/TF) policies. “We need to get to a point where again we are demonstrating that we are taking these things seriously,” Bankers Association of Trinidad and Tobago President Anya Schnoor told Newsday yesterday. Trinidad is not abiding by some of the things “we said we were going to do,” she said, including prosecuting people for money laundering and regulation of the gaming industry. The country had only recently been removed from the FATF grey list and now after the organisation’s last assessment in June, it faces the risk of being added back for inadequate compliance with global AML/TF standards. TT has until next May to prove it has made some serious strides in applying counter measures. Read more here
Warning from UWI economist: T&T in debt danger zone
UWI economist Dr Anthony Birchwood warned on Tuesday that Government debt has entered a “danger zone” and more attention must be paid to fiscal consolidation and expenditure reduction. Birchwood was part of a panel at a UWI Department of Economics Post-Budget Forum at the Daaga Auditorium on Tuesday evening, along with fellow economics lecturers Dr Daren Conrad and Dr Roger Hosein, and chaired by Lester Henry. He said debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) had entered precarious territory with contingent situations likely to occur if left unmanaged. “We have reached a debt to GDP ratio a little over 60 per cent which, by convention and economic literature, suggests that we have entered into a danger zone. If we have reached the danger zone it means we must be very careful about how we spend going forward and how we borrow,” he said. Read more here
Disappointing package
Finance Minister Colm Imbert sustained stinging criticism at the Chaguanas Chamber's post-budget debate on Wednesday night. The panellists, former trade ministers Vasant Bharath, Mariano Browne, economist Indera Sagewan-Alli and current Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon addressed a small gathering of local businessmen at the Chaguanas Borough Corporation office in Chaguanas. Read more here
REGIONAL
They Stay - Gov't To Allow Former Sugar Workers To Remain In Unfinished Houses, Avoids Clash
According to highly placed sources, the Government is to allow former sugar workers to remain in the new housing units at Stokes Hall near Golden Grove, St Thomas, quickly putting an end to a potential clash between authorities and the residents, who had been insisting that they would not vacate the unfinished houses. The Government had all 120 residents of the dilapidated barracks in Golden Grove sign contracts to temporarily relocate to the housing units last Friday to reduce risks associated with Hurricane Matthew, which, at the time, threatened the island. However, even before moving in, the residents were adamant that they had no intention of leaving, even though the houses do not have electricity, water, or a functioning sewerage system. Their insistence forced Agriculture Minister Karl Samuda to call an emergency meeting yesterday with members of the engineering and construction teams, as well as representatives of the parish council and the health ministry. Read more here
Death toll in Haiti from Hurricane Matthew rises to 108
The National Emergency Operations Centre (COUN) in Haiti on Thursday morning updated the provisional death toll from Hurricane Matthew to 108. However, minister of interior and territorial communities, François Anick Joseph, said the number of victims is still very tentative as information is still coming in from the southwestern part of the country, which had been cut off from the capital Port au Prince. Meanwhile, humanitarian aid from various countries began to arrive in Haiti as soon as the airports had reopened. Read more here
INTERNATIONAL
U.K. pound plunges more than 6% in mysterious flash crash
The British pound suffered a jarring flash crash on Friday, nosediving more than 6% against the dollar in a matter of minutes. The shock move in early trading in Asia left investors stunned and analysts blaming computerized trading programs for intensifying the dizzying drop. "It was just another quiet day in Asia, and then, Bang! All the lights went red," said Matt Simpson, senior market analyst at ThinkMarkets in Singapore. The pound had already sunk to a fresh 31-year low of around $1.26 on Thursday over deepening concerns that the U.K.'s split from the European Union will hurt the country's economy. Strategists had widely forecast it would go lower, but not as rapidly as it did on Friday. The flash crash yanked the British currency down to near $1.18, according to Factset. It recovered most of the losses soon afterward to trade around $1.24. Read more here
Nobel Peace Prize for Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos
7th October 2016