Bachan:
Point Lisas is a failure
Por
Kimberly Mackhan
Trinidad Express
Port Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
04 15 07
Former chairman of the National Petroleum Marketing
Company and Congress of the People Deputy Political
Leader Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan has described
the
Point Lisas Industrial Estate as a failure.
She has also warned against the delivery of any
quick returns from recent cross-border talks between
Patrick Manning and Venezuelan President, Hugo
Chavez.
Seepersad-Bachan said that the financial fortunes
of such an initiative depended on the details of
the Memorandum Of Understanding with the Venezuelan
Government and Trinidad and Tobago.
"He (Manning) said Point Lisas is a success,
but I say to you that Point Lisas is a failure.
All we do in the Point Lisas Industrial Estate
is get into primary processing and export our natural
gas. It is nothing more than being the plantation
economy and we must get out of that," Seepersad-Bachan
said at a recent Congress meeting held in Cedros.
"I
want to tell Mr Manning that the reason we have
to keep asking ourselves what will happen
when oil and gas runs out is because his entire
industrialisation policy is mounted on the wrong
development platform.
"The
Prime Minister is talking about a second wave
of industrialisation, but what could that
be? He did not get the first phase right."
Seepersad-Bachan has called on the Prime Minister
to lay the details of the MOU with the Venezuelan
Government in Parliament.
"The financial fortunes for generations to
come will depend on this agreement. I am calling
on Mr Manning to table the details of this agreement
for scrutiny by the Parliament and for it to be
forwarded to a Joint Select Committee so citizens
of Trinidad and Tobago can understand the details
of this cross-border agreement," she said.
"Once
again, he (Manning) has not told the nation the
fundamentals of this MOU that is to
be signed between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago
in terms of the unitisation of this cross border
field.
"What
Mr Manning is agreeing to is a general framework
agreement, but within that framework
comes other complex agreements which take years
to hammer out."
Trinidad
Express
Saturday, April 7th 2007
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©2007 Trinidad Express. All Rights Reserved.
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