Alutrint-The proposed Aluminium Smelter in Trinidad and Tobago

[Rhea Mungal]

Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh
University of the West Indies
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
West Indies

PETITION TO SEE THE ALUTRINT ACCOUNTING SHEET

The State, having established by our Constitution and the rules laid down for performance monitoring of State Enterprises, that the ultimate shareholder of State Enterprises is the public, we the public, demand the right to see all the accounts, including a cost-benefit analysis, of Alutrint, a 100% owned State Enterprise, capable of enormous health, social, ecological and economic destruction of the lands, peoples and communities of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
For three years citizens of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago have been attempting to engage the State in a discussion on the economics of Alutrint, the propose aluminum smelter on the South West Peninsula. In 2006, officials of Alutrint and the National Energy Corporation refused to appear before Senator Mary King, the head of the Joint Select Committee established to assess concerns over the proposed aluminum industry in Trinidad. In 2007 requests for a cost-benefit analysis of Alutrint were rejected: citizens were thrown out of the National Energy Corporation and the Environmental Management Authority; requests for the cost-benefit analysis under the Freedom of Information Act were met by claims to “confidentitiality”. In 2007, a letter was written to Karen Nunez-Tesheira, the Corporation Sole, the Minister of Finance, asking for costs and benefits of Alutrint. There was no reply.
In June 2009, representatives of eight groups held a press conference in front of the Financial Towers in Port of Spain. They read to the media a letter they were sending to Professor Ken Julien, the chairman of the National Export Gas Task Force when Alutrint was established, Philip Julien the Ag. Chief Executive Officer of Alutrint, and Conrad Enill, the Minister of Energy and line Minister for Alutrint. After twenty-one days, there has been no response from these officials. The letter asked for the past, current and proposed costs of Alutrint, the cost-benefit analysis and a meeting with officials to be informed of the benefits of Alutrint.
The costs and benefits of this state enterprise, now 100% owned by Trinidad and Tobago, must not be hidden from public purview. The ultimate stakeholders in Alutrint are the citizens of the Republic. Huge capital, social and ecological cost will be borne, for forty to fifty years and more by the citizenry. What are the benefits?
Alutrint officials, the National Energy Corporation, the Ministry of Energy and the Finance Minister have failed to apply their own standards for efficiency, transparency and accountability. The State Enterprises Performance Monitoring Manual, published by the Ministry of Finance, Investments in January 2008 has ruled: “Government has agreed that State Enterprises be required to publish in at least one major daily newspaper a summary of the audited financial statements within 4 months to the end of their financial year and a summary of the unaudited half-yearly statements within two months of the mid-year date.” Regulations such as these apply to all state enterprises, including Alutrint, which make this entity answerable to the Corporation Sole, the Minister of Finance, Cabinet, Parliament and ultimately the public.
All the evidence seems to indicate that Alutrint would be an economic bust. The public must know this. We are the ultimate shareholders. The objective of this website is economic accountability. If we fail to ask questions about costs and benefits of Alutrint, the Government is likely to hide many economic costs and ultimately declare a financial profit. We cannot afford to let this happen. The health, economic, social and ecological risks are too enormous. We demand, as ultimate stakeholders to know the true costs and benefits of Alutrint. This question should be taken up by all citizens, our journalists, our legal experts, our trade unions, our politicians, and our economists, each and every citizen. If Alutrint’s CEO, Philip Julien; the line minister, Minister of Energy, Conrad Enill; the architect of Alutrint Professor Ken Julien cannot cost it, the public will close it. The Corporation Sole must know: Cost it or close it.

Submitted by Rhea Mungal
http://alutrint.wordpress.com/

[Rhea Mungal]

Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh
University of the West Indies
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
West Indies

ALUTRINT: THE WORST ECONOMIC FIT FOR T&T

Alutrint aluminum smelter is simply the worst economic fit for the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It is an economic bust. It is destructive to human health. It is an ecological nightmare. It prevents the evolution of a suitable and lucrative economic fit for the Republic.
First, let us look at the basic costs of Alutrint. These are costs to the taxpayer, the ultimate stakeholders of this project, since Alutrint is now 100% owned by the Republic. We would pay for the aluminum port. We would pay for the power plant. We would pay the billions for the Chinese loan for the proposed smelter. We would pay billions on the gas subsidy; this project would consume huge amounts of non-stranded increasingly scarce gas; the opportunity cost of this gas, the international price minus the rate to Alutrint, would run into tens of billions over the period of forty to fifty years.
We would have to put on the public’s cost accounting sheet the millions of dollars for community relocations; in addition to the communities already located, more and more residents are demanding relocation. We would have to include the millions of dollars in infrastructural costs: the burial and compaction of three water- producing dams; the running of gas lines; the clearance of 1000 acres of forest; the diversion of the Vessigny River; the capping of dozens of oilwells; the removal and then replacement of a buffer zone etc.
We would have to include also the cost which would make Alutrint permanently non-competitive. Remember, this company is state-owned. It has not managed even a snow-cone cart; it is a new company. It is not, like all major players in this globally strategic industry, vertically integrated: we do not own bauxite mines, alumina processing facilities, other raw material chemical and minerals which go into processing aluminum. We would have to pay international market prices for all these inputs. Additionally, we would have to pay the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in the storage, transportation, and treatment (outside of the Caribbean), of the highly toxic Spent Pot Lining. This is a recurrent cost over the period of forty to fifty years. We would have to pay the millions of dollars in decommissioning the plant.
Then there are the double-digit millions of dollars: the cost of scores of consultancies, legal bills for three silks and more; the costs of technical services for example soil testing and engineering; administrative cost: to National Energy Corporation and National Gas Company, the Ministry of Energy, the Environmental Management Authority; payment of salaries of top management of Alutrint over the last five years; the cost of managing monitoring and mitigation measures: twenty-odd EMA personnel over the course of forty to fifty years. Propaganda costs are also significant: the bussing and refreshing of supporters, television features, full-page newspaper ads, a newsletter, sponsorship of local teams and events, the hosting of two national symposia to justify the project.

What figure must we cost ourselves, additionally, for the degradation of lungs, pancreas, other vital organs of the children, women and men of the Republic? What must we put into our accounting sheet for the destruction of 1000 acres of seaside forest, with its farms, beekeeping industry, forest occupations like hunting and fishing? What figure must we cost ourselves for the destruction of three water-producing dams? For the destruction of natural springs, the degradation of the Vessigny River and Beach, for the long-term damage to soil, water, the air? What figure must the cost accounting show for the millions of tons of carbon that would be emitted? Each year the power plant would emit 770,000 tons and the smelter 250,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

To top it all, SURAL, the 40% partner of Alutrint has pulled out of the project. SURAL was to contribute downstreaming and international marketing expertise. Second, the ‘NEC/ NGC policy’ of Chinese Management Local Labour as promised by NEC three years ago has been busted: the Chinese, as part of its loan stratagem has demanded 1500 jobs for Chinese for the smelter construction; 400 would go to locals.
The future is clear. Alutrint, even if it doubles the size of its 125,000 ton per year facility, cannot viably compete on the global market for aluminum. What this company will attempt to do is to hide the real costs of the project. Then they will pass on marketing and the local aluminum economy to Chinese ownership. This means that we pay the costs, the financial, the health, the social and the ecological, and the Chinese reap the benefits. Pure and simple. In real terms we would own the cost of Alutrint only; the Chinese would own the profits.
Meanwhile, a better economic fit - for example, a photovoltaic solar cell industry for Trinidad and Tobago, on the very spot where they propose to put Alutrint, an industry capable of generating 5000 jobs, with positive health, economic and ecological impacts - lies dormant, un-evolved. A proposal for this industry has been lying on Professor Ken Julien’s shelf since November 2006.

Sincerely
Wayne Kublalsingh

Submitted by Rhea Mungal
http://alutrint.wordpress.com/

[Rhea Mungal]

Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh
University of the West Indies
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
West Indies

IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO WILL PEEL THIS ALLOU

There seems to be some uncertainty about the politics of the NO SMELTER/NO ESSAR STEEL lobby on the West Coast of Trinidad. Any movement finds attached to it its fair share of transients. But the steady heartbeat of the movement is revolutionary. We practice Revolutionary Politics. What does this mean?
First, it means getting the people to feel their power. Historically, the people have come to the wicket with a bat without a handle. Revolutionary politics, by winning victory after victory, puts a handle on the bat of the people. Only when people can feel the handle, feel the power of the bat, can they really begin to play.
Second, it means showing people what is possible. What is possible in health, education, communications, transportation, security, agricultural and industrial production, governance and so on? What we have now in most sectors is bogus development. What we want is Ital Development. Real, genuine development. The current smelter and steel mill agenda is a symbol of bogus development. It is not development at all; it is underdevelopment.
Third, it means supporting any political party competent and sworn to delivering Ital Revolution, genuine development. The political party’s primary duty is to win power and convert the resources of state and people into real wealth. Which current political party would evolve into a real party?
Fourth, it means converting Ital Revolution into a Caribbean phenomenon. It is we the people who peel the allou. It is the Caribbean people who hold the power, not the clerk, the CEO, the Board, the Line Minister, the Corporation Sole, the Cabinet, the Parliament. These entities are there to act on half of the citizens of the Republic. They must and shall act “re the Public”. So, for example, when we ask to for the accounts of Alutrint, with its destructive economic prospects, we mean to see them.
This then is the politics of NO SMELTER/NO ESSAR STEELMILL. Little by little victories won, consistently and hard fought, will cause the people to feel their power. In time the people will seize the bat-handle of their economic history. And wield it, like Lara, with authority.
Wayne Kublalsingh

Submitted by Rhea Mungal
http://alutrint.wordpress.com/

[Rhea Mungal]

June 5th 2009

Philip Julien
Acting Chief Executive Officer
ALUTRINT
16 Mulchan Seuchan Road
Chaguanas

Professor Ken Julien
Trintoplan Compound
Orange Grove Road
Tacarigua
Trinidad and Tobago

Senator the Honourable Conrad Enill
Minister of Energy and Energy Industries
Level 26 Tower C
No 1
Wrightson Road
Port of Spain


Dear Mr Philip Julien, Professor Ken Julien, Mr Conrad Enill,

We are pleased to inform you that we, the citizens of Chatham, Vance River, La Brea, Claxton Bay, St Augustine, Port of Spain and representatives of a number of concerned groups on the West Coast, have united to approach you on a matter of urgent national importance.
Having studied many of the costs of the proposed Alutrint Smelter, we find that this entity has, and would, incur a number of grave risks to the population of Trinidad and Tobago.

We are aware that we the people, and the communities, are the ultimate stakeholders in Alutrint.
We therefore wish to request from your offices the following:
1.A meeting with you to discuss the economic viability of Alutrint.
2.A detailed accounting of the costs of Alutrint, past, current and proposed.
3.The cost-benefit analysis of the Alutrint project.

If, in your view the Alutrint smelter is economically viable, we humble request that you sit with a number of our representatives, some of whom are trained in the field of Economics, and show us the accounting, the modeling, the projection to show that this is so.
We trust that you take this opportunity provided to reassure the public of Trinidad and Tobago that Alutrint is indeed economically viable, and not another ISCOTT in the making.

P.S. This letter is being advertised on the national media of Trinidad and Tobago

Sincerely
For Representatives of eight groups.
Wayne Kublalsingh
1 Kerria Drive
La Florrissante
D’Abadie
771-5181

Representatives of Eight Groups
Rajesh Manohar
Chatham Hunters Group

Yvonne Ashby
Chatham Group for the Protection of the Environment

Dalton Dorman
Smelta Karavan

Cathal Healy-Singh
Rights Action Group

Ray Kublalsingh
Resource Protection Group of Claxton Bay

Hazel Smith
Civil Rights Association of Trinidad and Tobago

Nedra Jackson
Vessigny Village

Gary Aboud
Fishermen and Friends of the Sea

Aruna Ali
Chatham Women’s Group For the Protection of the Environment

Peter Vine
Resource Protection Group of Claxton Bay

Wayne Kublalsingh
No-Smelter Alliance of Trinidad and Tobago

Raphael Sebastian
Cedros Peninsula United


Submitted by Rhea Mungal
http://alutrint.wordpress.com/

[Rhea Mungal]

Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh
University of the West Indies
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
West Indies

WE WANT TO SEE THE ALUTRINT ACCOUNTS

We badly want to see the Alutrint accounts. We want to see it, like yesterday. Because Alutrint is careening into a quagmire of malfeasance and corruption. We want to see what the State has spent on Alutrint, what it will spend, and what it will gain. So far, we are seeing, from the basic economic data, that Alutrint will bust. Bust for the stakeholders of this project: the State and the people.

In April 2006, the head of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament called on individuals involved in Alutrint, which included Professor Ken Julien and his son the Project Manager (now Acting CEO), to appear before her. Mary King wanted to question them on the economic viability of Alutrint. They failed to appear.

In April 2007, Miss Rosanna Farmer, Dr Peter Vine and Wayne Kublalsingh wrote to the Environmental Management Authority requesting “any cost benefit analysis” that they had considered in making their decision to certify Alutrint. The EMA refused to answer. The forcible ejection of Kublalsingh from the EMA and the subsequent 40 day fast in front of the building, by Farmer, Kublalsingh and many citizens, did not produce the Alutrint accounting.

In December 2007 Kublalsingh wrote a letter to the Corporation Sole, the Minister of Finance, responsible for the accounts of all state enterprises, calling for the Alutrint account. According to the State Enterprises Performance Monitoring Manual:

“Government has agreed that State Enterprises be required to publish in at least one (1) major daily newspaper a summary of the audited financial statements within four (4) months to the end of their financial year and a summary of the unaudited half-yearly statements within two (2) months of the mid-year date. Such summary statements must be in accordance with the requirements of the Securities Industry Act, 1995." (Jan. 2008)

The letter to Nunez-Tesheira was published in the press at that time. So far there has been no answer to this letter. There has been no publication of the audited financial statements of Alutrint.

Between 2007 and 2008 Dr Peter Vine and Wayne Kublalsingh wrote letters under the Freedom of Information Act requesting the costs and benefits of Alutrint. These letters were sent to the National Energy Corporation, the National Gas Company and the EMA. Official replies to these letters stated that the accounts of Alutrint were “confidential”. Vine and Kublalsingh were later thrown out of the NEC compound as they sought to see the Alutrint accounts. Kublalsingh was arrested by police.

On June 2009 the representatives of eight groups held a media conference in front of the Financial Towers of Port of Spain. They again called for the costs and benefits, the accounting sheet of Alutrint. They wrote letters to Professor Ken Julien, Energy Minister Conrad Enill (Alutrint’s line Minister) and Philip Julien (Acting CEO of Alutrint) requesting the costs and benefits of Alutrint. Today, after 26 days, there has been no response.

The citizens of the Republic will be paying Alutrint’s costs: port, power plant, smelter, gas subsidy, infrastructure, relocation, technical and legal consultancies, propaganda, raw materials and production; this will amount to tens of billions of dollars, not even taking into account severe health and ecological costs. Where are the profits?

The Chinese have granted us about 400 jobs for our citizens in the construction phase; their nationals will get over 1500. The downstream and marketing partner SURAL (owner of 40% of Alutrint) has pulled out of the project. Professor Julien, Minister Enill and Philip Julien cannot run Alutrint smelter, a company which has never even run a sno-cone cart. The Chinese will take over Alutrint and run it. We will bust, the Chinese will be the winners. The Chinese dragon will rise in the West, smoking our gas, our soil, our air, our dams, our river, our beach, our sea, our health, our money from its nostrils.

We want to see the Alutrint accounts. The perpetrators of Alutrint are planning to disappear, dissolve the huge economic costs of Alutrint. By blurring the accounting lines between Alutrint and other entities, they could claim a small financial gain at the end of the day. This must not be allowed to happen. This would be corruption, malfeasance, economic criminality. Finance Minister Mariano Browne, who now seems to be demanding fiduciary accountability from state enterprises, must order Alutrint to do its accounting. He must order Alutrint to publish, as stipulated by regulation and law, its audited accounts.

Wayne Kublalsingh

Submitted by Rhea Mungal
http://alutrint.wordpress.com/

[Rhea Mungal]

Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh
University of the West Indies
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
West Indies

June 24th 2009

Dr Roodal Moonilal
Member of Parliament
Chairman
Public Accounts Committee
Red House
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago


Re:ACCOUNTS OF ALUTRINT
Dear Dr Moonilal,

We call your attention to the following matter, which we regard as a matter of urgent national importance.

For two years we have been attempting to find a statement of the accounts of the state enterprise Alutrint. We have requested this information from a number of public officials and state institutions, without success. Now that Alutrint is a 100% owned state enterprise, we recognize that the public is the ultimate stakeholder in this entity.

We also find that “The State Enterprises Performance Monitoring Manual”, published by the Ministry of Finance, Investments (January 2008 edition) has ruled: “Government has agreed that State Enterprises be required to publish in at least one major daily newspaper a summary of the audited financial statements within 4 months to the end of their financial year and a summary of the unaudited half-yearly statements within two months of the mid-year date.” We agree to the public right to periodically see the accounts of state enterprises.

We seek this information as a matter of urgent national importance, since we have strong concerns, as outlined in documents e-mailed to you, about the economic and financial risks of Alutrint.

Yours sincerely

Wayne Kublalsingh
Lecturer, University of the West Indies, St Augustine

Dr Peter Vine
Physicist

Submitted by Rhea Mungal
http://alutrint.wordpress.com/

[Rhea Mungal]

If Alutrint is such a good “economic fit” ( Philip Julien) why is it being granted so many tax goodies?

Legal Notice No 161

The Fiscal Incentives Act: 85:01
ORDER

Made by the President Under Section 10 of the Fiscal Incentives Act
THE FISCAL INCENTIVES (ALUTRINT) ORDER, 2008 . . .

The Company classified as a highly capital intensive enterprise under 9(2) of the Act, is granted in respect of the approved products, for a period of ten years commencing from the production day –
(a)total relief from income tax or dividends or other distributions, other than interest, out of profits or gains derived from the manufacture of approved products in accordance of the provisions of Section 6(I) of the Act; and
(b)exemption from value added tax in accordance with Section 44(g) of the Value Added Tax Act. . .

Dated this 17th day of October 2008
A.Leung Woo-Gabriel
Secretary to Cabinet

Plus a heavily subsidized gas goodie!
SHOW US THE ALUTRINT ACCOUNTS BOSS!

[Rhea Mungal]

Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh
University of the West Indies
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
West Indies

DON’T FORGET THE PROPAGANDA COSTS

The propaganda costs for the Alutrint smelter must also be shown to the public. When preparing the accounts of Alutrint, officials must include propaganda costs. The ultimate stakeholders, the public, must know how much it cost to make propaganda for a project which is ruinous to its health, economy and ecology. What are some of these propaganda costs?

The cost of food, drink and transport for bussing in partisan support to La Brea for public consultations.

The cost of thousands of “Build de Smelter” jerseys.

The cost of hundreds of full page newspaper ads telling of how nice smelter is.

The cost of the Alutrint newsletter, circulated by the tens of thousands.

The cost of television ads and documentaries of various lengths designed to make smelter look like serious development.

The cost of sponsorship of local organizations, events and persons, for example, football team, fetes, sports personalities.

The cost of thousands of fliers, the latest a pamphlet (14”x 8.5”) by the Member of Parliament for La Brea, and a colour advertisement (17”x 11”) for the radio program La Brea Today.

The cost of the La Brea Today feature on ten radio stations, twenty times per week, which has been running for a couple of weeks now.

The cost of seven environmental impact statements, disguised to look like real science, but are Alutrint-financed manifestos designed to hide the cost of negative impacts and propagate benefits.

The costs of symposia for Alutrint, one at Paria Suite and the other at UWI, designed to provide a rack for the Prime Minister to hang his smelter hat: at the end of these symposia, altering truth, he declared that the experts had said that smelter was good.

Whenever Alutrint, the National Gas Company, the National Energy Corporation, the Corporation Sole – Minister of Finance, the Minister of Energy, Professor Ken Julien, Philip Julien (Ag. Chief Executive Officer of Alutrint) decide to reveal the accounts of Alutrint, they must include these costs. Over the past three years all of the above entities have been sent requests, by Parliament and various publics, asking to see the accounts or economics of Alutrint. But no answer, just silence.

The people, the owners of Alutrint, are getting two dinner-mints for their dollar: one propaganda, the other silence. Both are costly. But the more tragic cost, is silence.

Sincerely
Wayne Kublalsingh

Submitted by Rhea Mungal
http://alutrint.wordpress.com/

[Rhea Mungal]

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH JAMALCO AND (JPSCo)

“Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica in 2004 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the supply of 1.1 million tonnes of LNG per annum over a 20 year period, beginning 2009 for use by JAMALCO, the Jamaican aluminium company and the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo) power plants.”
Special Correspondent Linda Hutchinson-Jaffar (Newsday, August 7th 2009)

All for Aluminum
The Aluminium Consortium within our Government wants to ship LNG to the failing Jamaican Alumina company, so that this company could supply alumina to Alutrint. At what price would JAMALCO and JPSCo be getting the LNG? Would it be another gas subsidy, and therefore another cost to the Trinidad and Tobago taxpayer?

[Rhea Mungal]

HOW TO LIE WITHOUT STATISTICS

There is a very interesting book called How To Lie With Statistics written by Darrell Huff in 1954. Mr Manning’s speech on his “Education Tour” of Point Fortin, August 11th 2009, should be called How To Lie Without Statistics:

"And those who are against it will tell you that it is not that they are opposed to the smelter, but to the whole concept of industrialization on the whole."

Prime Minister Manning hides the economic statistics of smelter under the cover of false statements such as these.

Dr.Wayne Kublalsingh


Submitted by Rhea Mungal
http://alutrint.wordpress.com/