(Trinidad Express) A US$49-million deal has been sealed between Lake Asphalt Trinidad and Tobago Ltd to supply asphalt to China Railway Construction, Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine said yesterday.
He said Cabinet agreed to the three-year contract with the Chinese company which will see many benefits to this country.
Speaking at the post-Cabinet press conference at the Prime Minister’s St Clair office, Ramnarine said some 112 temporary workers at Lake Asphalt will be made permanent bringing the total staff to 297 people.
Chinese Railway will also invest in research and development aimed at the downstream market.
“The other benefit will be dividends that would be paid to the shareholder which is Corporation Sole—the Minister of Finance—and generally the cash flow that will come to Lake Asphalt will allow the company to modernise and re-tool to face the challenges of global demands for the product in the future,” he said.
With respect to the supply of gas to the Point Lisas Industrial Estate, Ramnarine assured that there was no gas shortage.
“Since I became Minister we had a situation at Point Lisas where the estate uses approximately 1,600 million standard cubic feet of gas a day which is about 40 per cent of all the natural gas produced in this country,” he said.
Ramnarine said he will be meeting with the heads of all major gas suppliers next week to come up with a commercial and engineering solution.
