Trinidad govt mulls Petrotrin overhaul

PORT OF SPAIN, January 13, 2017 – The prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Keith Rowley, in a televised address late on Wednesday hinted at an overhaul of state-run Petrotrin.

Having averted a 90-day workers’ strike by permitting a 5% increase in salaries, Rowley said the government and taxpayers could no longer “continue to turn a blind eye or be uninterested in the challenges” facing Petrotrin.

Labelling the company’s payroll ratio as “exceptionally high,” the PM said Petrotrin’s performance was weighed down by an annual wage bill of more than USD 280 million (TTD 1.9 billion) compared with other state-owned entities. The company is also held back by external loans to the tune of USD 1.6 billion. According to Rowley, Petrorin has seen its revenue dwindle from USD 5.47 billion (TTD 37 billion) in 2012 to 2.37 billion (TTD 16 billion) last year.

Weighing in on the matter earlier this week, Gerry C. Brooks, chairman of Trinidad National Gas Company subsidiary NGC CNG, said the government would have to “re-engineer” Petrotrin. “There are several different models which can be employed. There is the model of Ecopetrol in Columbia, which was successfully followed and which saw private-public partnership which saw a rationalisation of the organisation and which was a re-engineering of the organisation,” Brooks said in an interview with the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, adding that “bold steps” were needed.

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