No TGU shares being sold

“THE answer is zero!” This was Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s response on Wednesday to a question from the Opposition about whether shares in Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU) were being sold to German company Ferrostaal GmbH.

Speaking in the House of Representatives, Imbert described this question from Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee as “political mischief.” In the Mid-Year Review in April, Imbert said he made it crystal clear, “that it was the Government’s intention to place a number of companies into the asset base of the National Investment Fund (NIF).” TGU is one of those companies.

“It is therefore impossible, if the Government is proceeding to use TGU as one of the assets to underpin the NIF, that the Government would be selling any shares in TGU to Ferrostaal.”

Against that background a proposal to sell 40 percent of TGU shares to Ferrostaal is “no longer being pursued,” Imbert added.

He said Government has incurred no liability as a result of this.

Imbert was confident that, the Sandals International Resort in Tobago could be as successful as the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Port of Spain in terms of the return on equity, economic activity, profitability, benefits to the economy of Tobago and benefits to the overall national economy.

He reiterated that the Hyatt model is being used for the Sandals project, where Government owns the hotel, the brand runs it and Government receives a profit from the hotel’s operations.

Imbert said the Hyatt, “has almost paid for itself since its construction in 2008/2009 for the Summit of the Americas.”

Government has received “hundreds of millions of dollars” from the Hyatt since then, he added.

Imbert said his ministry’s Central Audit Committee is finalising a report on its investigations into an allegation that $10 million meant for Virgin Atlantic Airways went missing from the Tobago House of Assembly accounts. The Fraud Squad is also investigating this matter.

Imbert also said consultations for the acquisition of land to build a new terminal at the Arthur NR Robinson International Airport in Tobago are ongoing.