PRIME MINISTER Kamla Persad-Bissessar disclosed that the Panamanian government is interested in purchasing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Trinidad and Tobago.
The Prime Minister made this disclosure at a news conference at Piarco International Airport on Sunday when she returned from London, after holding meetings there following the end of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth, Australia.
Persad-Bissessar said apart from a delegation from Brazilian energy company Petrobras coming to TT later this month to sign a memorandum of understanding, Panama is interested in exploring investment opportunities in this country’s energy sector.
“They have some investment opportunities. They want to buy our LPG and they want to give us bunkering facilities on the Panama Canal,” the Prime Minister stated.
Persad-Bissessar also said she hoped their would be progress soon with respect to tapping into natural gas reserves in the Loran-Manatee fields which straddle the maritime border between TT and Venezuela.
Noting the efforts made by her and other members of her delegation at the CHOGM and in London to heighten this country’s economic profile and encourage investment, the Prime Minister was pleased that there were positive developments in this area. “You could not get better than that,” she said.
Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine said British Petroleum’s (BP) payment of $1 billion in taxes which the company owed the country for the period 2001 to 2006 was the result of negotiations which he and Finance Minister Winston Dookeran held with energy companies operating in TT before the presentation of the 2012 Budget in Parliament on October 10.
Ramnarine explained that one of the objectives of these meeting was to explore ways of “ raising revenue without taxation.
“This was one possible route through which could be had,” he said.
Asked whether the country could expect other energy companies to make similar payments in the near future, Ramnarine said he could not make a pronouncement on that because that was “a matter of privacy” between the Board of Inland Revenue and those companies.
Trade and Industry Minister Stephen Cadiz, who like Ramnarine was part of TT’s delegation at the CHOGM, said there were discussions with delegates from Mauritius who indicated that “exactly what TT is what Mauritius went through and they say we are very much on the right track” with respect to economic diversification.
