NEWS
PM set to ‘debate’ alone
State-owned Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG) is set to host a leadership exchange tomorrow but it is unlikely that Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley will participate. So far, the only person who has confirmed attendance for the July 30 is Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who has refused to engage in a national debate hosted by the T&T Debates Commission (TTDC) unless the commission agrees to accede to several demands, which include the power to reject the moderator, members of an anonymous panel and the production team, including the technical director. The TTDC has fixed August 20 and 27 for the leaders’ debate and said the show would go on with the parties who are desirous of participating in its event. In an interview yesterday, Rowley said he would not participate in a debate with Persad-Bissessar as he has had no correspondence from her. Read more…
Cops accept 14% wage increase
The five-year wait by hundreds of police officers for improved salaries, terms and conditions of service came to an end on Monday when president of the Police Service and Social Welfare Association Insp Anand Ramesar signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Chief Personnel Officer Stephanie Lewis. The historic signing ceremony, which was held at La Boucan, Hilton Trinidad Hotel and Conference Centre, St Ann’s, Port-of-Spain, is for the period 2011 to 2013. Ramesar confirmed they had accepted the CPO’s latest offer of 14 per cent. He explained that this figure represented a 16.4 per cent market shift and that by way of settlement, the association had agreed to 29 per cent of that figure in the first year, with 57 per cent to be paid for the second year; by the end of the third year, officers would have received 85 per cent of the overall figure, totalling 14 per cent. Revised allowances and other benefits will also be improved for both first and second division officers of the Police Service. Read more…
Islam frowns on gunshot funerals
The firing of guns during a Muslim burial is not condoned by Islam, Maulana Siddiq Nisir, president of the Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’ah institute said yesterday as he reacted to the hail of gunshots fired on Monday at the burial of murder accused Allan ‘Scanny’ Martin. Martin was shot dead by police minutes after he, Hassan Atwell and Christopher ‘Monster’ Selby shot their way out of the Port-of- Spain prisons. Atwell was gunned down on Saturday morning in Laventille while Selby surrendered to police on Sunday evenning. During Martin’s burial at the Munroe Road Public cemetery on Monday, rapid gunfire was heard. Maulana Nisir was clear on what he thought about this gunshot salute by Martin’s associates. “This is not part of the culture or the practice of Islam. This is an aberration. This is not a Muslim practice. I guess it had something to do with the individual who was being buried. Whether the person was a righteous person or evil, we have an obligation to perform the rites of burial and bury that person. To classify that he was a hero or this or that, is a personal opinion,” Nisir explained. Read more…
POLITICS
ILP candidate confident of winning seat
The prospective Independent Liberal Party (ILP) candidate, Dayne Francois, also seemed to have substantial support throughout the constituency, having served as an alderman in the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation for a number of years. The ILP announced Francois as its candidate at a meeting in Cumana earlier this month, and Francois boasted hundreds of people from the constituency were in attendance. Francois, the only one of the three candidates to reside in the constituency, said he has every confidence he will win the seat come September 7. “I’m ahead of them all,” he said. “I would be very surprised if anyone else wins. It is virtually impossible.” Francois said his main focus would be on improving education in the constituency as the region has the highest dropout rate in the country, as well as the highest rate of teenage pregnancies. However, while several constituents said they supported Francois, they would not vote for him because of his affiliation with corruption-accused Jack Warner—leader of the ILP. Read more…
COP picks five more candidates
The Congress of the People (COP) has selected five more candidates for the September 7 polls but has still not finalised any arrangement with the United National Congress as to which seats it would contest. Deputy political leaders of the Congress of the People, Anirudh Mahabir and Lorraine Pouchet yesterday presented the five candidates at the party’s Port-of-Spain office during a news conference. The COP is a member unit in the People’s Partnership Government. Mahabir said negotiations between the member units of the partnership were still taking place but the COP expected to contest the six seats it now controlled and possibly more. The seats named yesterday were not among the six it won in the 2010 election. In 2010, COP won six seats: Arima (Rodger Samuel); D’Abadie/O’Meara (Anil Roberts); Lopinot/Bon Air West (Lincoln Douglas); San Fernando West (Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan); St Augustine (Prakash Ramadhar) and Tunapuna (Winston Dookeran). Read more…
BUSINESS
Phoenix Park IPO at $20 a share
State-owned National Gas Company proposes to offer 75.8 million shares in TTNGL (Phoenix Park) for sale at $20 a share, which will raise just over $1.5 billion, if the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of shares is fully subscribed, brokerage house WISE reported yesterday. At $1.5 billion, the IPO is the largest ever in the country’s history and is one of the most eagerly anticipated as it provides local individuals and institutions with an opportunity to invest in an energy company that generates some of the largest profit margins in T&T. The $20 price that local investors will pay for one share is 25 per cent less than the $25 that the Government, which owns 100 per cent of NGC, first considered last year when it first brought Phoenix Park to the market. The initial offer price has been reduced because the international prices of Phoenix Park’s products—propane, butane and natural gasoline—have declined along with oil prices. Read more…
Guyana oil find 12 times country’s GDP
As tensions escalate between Guyana and Venezuela over oil exploration in a disputed offhsore territory, neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago is hoping the dispute can be resolved because of the opportunities the crude discovery presents. The Exxon Guyana oil find announced in May, is estimated to be at least 700 million barrels of crude oil. It is “extremely significant and presents a huge opportunity for this country’s locally owned energy services sector”, Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine said in an e-mail reply to a Business Express query on July 24. Around the year 2000 the United States Geological Survey (USGS) had stated that the Guyana-Suriname basin was highly prospective of hydrocarbons. “There were past attempts to find oil and gas in Guyana that ended in frustration but now Exxon has had a major success,” Ramnarine said. Suriname already produces oil and has a small refinery but Suriname is expanding and will be drilling not far from the Exxon Guyana Liza discovery soon, he said. Read more…
TSTT working on internet problems
State owned Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) yesterday sought to assure its customers that it is doing what it can to increase available bandwidth for internet browsing, following damage to a submarine fibre optic cable in the vicinity of the undersea Kick’ em Jenny volcano near Grenada. In a release, TSTT said it regrets any inconvenience caused by this situation and it “will continue to explore alternatives for increasing available bandwidth to customers in the interim.”
The company advised its customers that they will continue to periodically experience slow browsing speeds for land line internet and mobile internet as a result of damage sustained to the cable. TSTT said a cable repair ship dispatched to the area had not been able to effect repairs to the cable as an alert for the volcano is still in effect. The website for the Seismic Research Centre at the University of the West Indies stated that 'the volcano is currently at Alert Level Yellow which means that vessels should observe a 1.5 km exclusion zone. Read more…
Swallowing that bitter fuel subsidy pill
In the din of the general election campaign, few people may have noted an announcement by the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that come August 1, the prices of petroleum products at the pumps will be “deregulated”. What this means is that an annual fuels subsidy of approximately US$1 billion will be effectively removed. According to the UAE's Ministry of Energy, a new system by which monthly prices will be proclaimed, will, in the immediate future, see consumers pay less for diesel and more for gasoline than they currently do. Their rationale for the removal of the subsidies at this time is instructive to citizens of this country, and especially so to our politicians who are vying for office and control of an economy that is similar to the UAE's in structure if not actual size. The main reason for the government of the five-emirate state acting to dismantle the subsidies at this time is lower oil prices, hence minimal increases at the pumps. They concede that the measures will impact inflation, but marginally. Read more…
REGIONAL
UN experts warn against deportations of people of Haitian descent from Dominican Republic
United Nations human rights experts on Tuesday called on the government of the Dominican Republic to take steps to prevent arbitrary deportations and to adopt measures to address allegations of racial profiling during deportations of people of Haitian descent. “No one should be deported when there are legal and valid reasons to stay,” human rights expert Mireille Fanon Mendes-France, who currently heads the UN Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent, said in a news release. “Migrants are entitled to protection and Dominicans of Haitian descent have the right to reside safely in the territory, as well as children born in the Dominican Republic who are legally registered,” she stated. Some 19,000 people have reportedly left Dominican Republic for Haiti since 21 June due to fear and amidst concerns that there will be violations when deportations officially start in August. “The Dominican Republic cannot violate international norms or those of the inter-American system of human rights protection, and especially not violate its own Constitution,” the expert emphasized. Read more…
INTERNATIONAL
Ford warns China car sales may see first fall since 1990
Ford has predicted industry-wide sales will be flat or fall in China this year - the world's biggest car market. The car giant expects 23 million to 24 million car sales in China, compared with 24 million last year. "At best we're saying flat, probably down," Ford's chief financial officer Bob Shanks told the BBC. If sales do fall, it would be the first time since 1990 that there has been a drop, he added. Despite the overall picture, Ford itself expects to do "quite well" in China due to four new car models and a new factory, Mr Shanks said. He said falls in commercial vehicle sales were driving the overall decline in industry sales in China. "That's usually closely tied to consumer confidence, investment in business and so forth.” So we think this is just a side effect of the government's move to transition the economy from one that's more export oriented and investment focused to one that's more consumer oriented," he added. Read more…
29th July 2015