By Staff Writer
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Jul 2, CMC – St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, Wednesday said while he is not “picking a fight” with Trinidad and Tobago, he maintains the position that the oil-rich twin island republic must put in place a mechanism to ensure the payment of Vincentian farmers who sell their produce to Port of Spain.
“I am not putting my mouth in their (Trinidad and Tobago) internal politics, but we have some problems which we have to solve. We can’t have CARICOM (Caribbean Community) unequally yoked otherwise the CSME (CARICOM Single Market and Economy) will falter,” Gonsalves said, distancing himself also from a call that had been made by St. Lucia’s Opposition Leader, Allen Chastanet, for the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to leave CARICOM.
He said that there are other aspects of unity within CARICOM that are beneficial to all member states.
Gonsalves, speaking on the state-owned NBC Radio on Wednesday, was responding to a statement made by the Trinidad and Tobago Energy and Energy Industries Minister, Dr. Roodal Moonilal, who had taken umbrage at Gonsalves’ recent remarks describing that country’s currency as “monopoly money”.
Moonilal told the Society of Petroleum Engineers of Trinidad and Tobago’s (SPETT) 2025 Mature Basin Energy Symposium he had heard about Gonsalves’ description of the foreign exchange situation in the twin-island republic.
“He should have shared his wisdom with his colleagues who are responsible for the collapse of our economy. It is a pity he did not share his thinking with the former administration over the last decade, which could have reversed this crisis with prudent management and enhanced investments in the energy sector.”
Moonilal said that the closure of the state-owned Petrotrin and the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery “would have contributed in no small measure to the decline in forex,” telling the symposium, “on another occasion we will speak on our plans to restart the refinery”.
But Gonsalves, in a very lengthy response to the situation, said that while he had contention with Moonilal or the new government in Port of Spain, he reiterated the circumstances that have led to the situation.
He said St. Vincent and the Grenadines pays Trinidad and Tobago annually over US$65 million in hard foreign currency for visible exports from that country, mainly petroleum products and manufactured goods.
But he said the sister CARICOM country cannot find less than a miserly four million US dollars in foreign exchange to pay for our agricultural products.
“If you get TT dollars and you bring the TT dollars here, what are you going to do with them. I say the thing is like monopoly money. Well, I understand that this particular minister may have commented adversely about what I may have said.
“Normally, as Prime Minister, I don’t get into controversies with ministers, I don’t answer ministers and I tend to answer prime ministers at our conferences and hardly ever across the Caribbean Sea, safe and except if I think you provoke me too much and it is in the interest of my country to speak.
“When I speak, I’m done with that,” Gonsalves said, adding that he has been following the career of Moonilal, “and he seems to me to be a sensible fellar.
“He is an experienced politician, so I am making an exception to speak to what he said. From the report which I saw, it is clear that he did not get all that I said, and I will send him a copy of my speech,” Gonsalves which was made during the OECS Assembly here last month.
“I believe he and his government will help me to work out this problem, because there is a problem and I believe (Prim Minnister) Kamla (Persad Bissesar) will help to work out this problem too,” Gonsalves said, noting that the government has just come into office following the April 28 general election in Trinidad and Tobago.
He said he had not that Moonilal had questioned why Kingston had not raised the issue with former prime minister Dr. Keith Rowley, adding “but I did.
“It is two things. He ain’t get my whole speech, he gets my throwaway line, because the truth is this. Can you sell anything in Trinidad and they give you TT money, what are you going to do with it in St. Vincent?
“But I have raised this thing over and over,” he told radio listeners, recalling that on February 22, 2018, he made a speech titled “Some Salient issues for resolution in CARICOM” and that there are letters on the files in Trinidad and Tobago in which he sought a policy decision regarding the nnon-availability of foreign exchange for the payment to Vincentian farmers selling goods to Trinidad and Tobago.
“It is wrong and unconscionable that the relevant authorities in Trinidad and Tobago have failed and or refused to address satisfactorily or at all this burning issue which affects our small farmers adversely,” Gonsalves said in that speech, adding that he will be sending it also to Moonilal so that he is aware of the years Kingstown had been trying to have the matter settled.
“I want people to understand, I do not have a problem with the people of Trinidad and Tobago, when I a in Trinidad, naturally I use TT dollars, but what am I going to do with TT dollars here?.
Gonsalves said he tried to have a solution through the Bank of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but the bank could only absorb so many TT dollars. So we have to solve this problem”.
Gonsalves said CARICOM had a central aspect in trade integration, saying “we can’t be unequally yoked like this”.
He said both his mother and wife are Trinidadian nationals, he is a follower of Despers Steelband, a lover of Trinidadian calypso and Soca, “but I have a quarrel in the way the economic elites in Trinidad and Tobago have fashioned a system …and I know the people of Trinidad and Tobago are demanding that that be changed and I suspect Moonilal himself wants that changed….”
Gonsalves has welcomed the appointment of former finance minister and banker, Larry Howai, as the new Governor of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, saying, “I am not picking a fight with the government of Trinidad and Tobago.
“I am saying there are some problems and we have to sort them out,” he added.
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