Trinidad AG plays down cancellation of Chinese housing contract

(Trinidad Guardian)  “A storm in a teacup and noth­ing to lose sleep­over.”

That’s how At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi yes­ter­day de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s can­cel­la­tion of a US$71.7 mil­lion con­tract to con­struct 5,000 apart­ment units at spe­cif­ic sites across Trinidad signed by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) with the Chi­nese con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, Gezhou­ba Group In­ter­na­tion­al En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (CG­GC).

At last Thurs­day’s Post Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the can­cel­la­tion of the con­tract fol­low­ing dis­crep­an­cies with the project.

Row­ley in­di­cat­ed that some parts of the con­tract did not meet Cab­i­net’s ap­proval.

Speak­ing to re­porters in Par­lia­ment dur­ing the tea break, Al-Rawi in giv­ing more de­tails said the con­tract came to Cab­i­net while the HDC had the lat­i­tude to con­sid­er its own af­fairs.

The AG was abroad when the can­cel­la­tion was made.

“I don’t think this is any­thing to lose sleep over be­cause ul­ti­mate­ly it came down to whether we had the best deal on the ta­ble.”

Al-Rawi said if Cab­i­net through its process­es has de­ter­mined that a bet­ter deal can be had “then great.”

He said in a fur­ther com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment the price will go down and the coun­try could get a bet­ter val­ue for mon­ey.

“As MP for San Fer­nan­do West I am thrilled to hear the HDC tell me that the project is like­ly to be on time be­cause they are us­ing stock plans…stock plans with an open ten­der­ing en­vi­ron­ment… which means that the project can start this year…with fin­gers crossed on that ba­sis.”

The hous­ing units were sup­posed to be built in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do.

He said he was anx­ious to see the project get off the ground.

“I have been told that the project is on track…. that is what I am in­ter­est­ed in.”

The AG said as MP he would be con­stant and ag­gres­sive in ask­ing for the project to be on a pri­or­i­ty list­ing to go hand in hand with oth­er projects in his con­stituen­cy which has been ne­glect­ed.

Al-Rawi said as far as he was aware no pay­ments were made to CG­GC by HDC.

The AG as­sured that the can­cel­la­tion would no way strain the re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Chi­na.

“I think this is re­al­ly a storm in a teacup and I am hon­est­ly not wor­ried about it. At the end of the day as the busi­ness­man say if you are sharp­en­ing pen­cils to get a bet­ter val­ue on the c’est la vie.”

Pressed by Guardian Me­dia to out­line the dis­crep­an­cies in the con­tract, the AG could not say

“I have not been ad­vised on the con­tract… I have not seen the con­tract ….the AG was not re­quired to ad­vise on the con­tract. I am a stranger to all of that. I am not fa­mil­iar with your line of ques­tion­ing.”

Asked if a Chi­nese team was al­ready in Trinidad to be­gin work on the hous­ing units, the AG sug­gest­ed that we di­rect this ques­tion and all oth­ers to the HDC.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the mat­ter “may be more se­ri­ous than we think.”

He said a frame­work agree­ment was signed in Ju­ly 2018 and be­fore this was done Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters had to be in­volved in this process.

Fol­low­ing this, Mooni­lal said Cab­i­net has to con­sid­er and ap­prove the sign­ing of the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tract.

“We are not sure at this stage if this was done that way….whether it was ever sent to Cab­i­net and they ever had over­sight over this,” Mooni­lal said.

In May 2019, Mooni­lal said the con­tract was signed by HDC.

“What is trou­bling to us… we are told by per­sons, in the know, in this mat­ter is that the ad­vanced pay­ment guar­an­teed had al­ready been is­sued. HDC had al­ready is­sued some pay­ment guar­an­tee…if that is breached now on ter­mi­na­tion that car­ries with it fi­nan­cial risks.”

Mooni­lal said a team to un­der­take the work had al­ready ar­rived in Trinidad to start the project.

“Are there na­tion­als of Chi­na in the coun­try al­ready here on this project and to what ex­tent we have to pay for their work.”

In ad­di­tion, Mooni­lal said the ter­mi­na­tion car­ries with it fi­nan­cial loss­es for CG­GC “and those loss­es they would off­set to HDC and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.”

As for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter, he ques­tioned which min­is­ter/s ne­go­ti­at­ed the con­tract, stat­ing that they must “be held ac­count­able.”

He said when the mat­ter first arose Row­ley had the port­fo­lio as hous­ing min­is­ter.

“The ques­tion is whether or not this could have been rene­go­ti­at­ed apart from be­ing can­celled or ter­mi­nat­ed.”

Mooni­lal said CG­GC has al­ready re­port­ed that it have se­cured fi­nanc­ing for the project with a guar­an­tee from the HDC to pay.

“There is now a fur­ther risk that the Chi­na Bank­ing and Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion…a kind of over­sight com­mis­sion in Chi­na could is­sue in­dus­try risk to T&T warn­ing oth­er in­vestors.”