By MOHAMED HAMALUDIN
“Oil “don’t spoil,” the late Dr. Eric Williams, prime minister of petroleum-rich Trinidad and Tobago, was reported to have once said. To which the late Forbes Burnham, then prime minister of agriculture-oriented Guyana, retorted, “But you can’t eat it.”
What happens when you have both oil and food? Lots of headache.
Tension between the two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations has existed for decades, even though Trinidad and Tobago once wrote off a US$400 million debt Guyana owed for petroleum products, according to former Guyana Parliament Speaker Ralph Ramkarran.
Many Guyanese traveled to other CARICOM countries to live and work in the 1970s and 1980s, “creating monumental chaos” during transit at Trinidad’s Piarco International Airport “with huge bundles packed with goods being brought back to Guyana for trading,” Ramkarran wrote in a Guyanese Online column.“ No single Guyanese passing through Trinidad during this era, and even much later, has not experienced surly, enhanced scrutiny and less than accommodating reception at Trinidad’s Immigration and Customs desks.” Continue reading
GUYANA: Energy Crisis: The time has come for CSME to play it s role – Letter by Eusi Kwayana
In a discussion on Sunday June 19, 2022, the panelists on Observer Radio in Antigua considered a statement by Prime Minister Gaston Brown of Antigua and Barbuda. That statement suggested that it might be necessary for the Caribbean countries in CARICOM to approach Venezuela for a second chapter of Petro Caribe which was designed to help Caribbean countries at the time of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution.
At this point it is good to remember that Trinidad and Tobago during the days of its oil boom had extended credit facilities to some of the Caribbean islands in CARICOM. One of them, Guyana, benefitted from these credits up to its limit of $500M in US dollars, I suppose largely for fuel imports. It was reported that a substantial amount of these debts ($482.5M US dollars) were eventually written off by the Trinidad and Tobago government as Guyana was unable to honour its debt. (See note at end). Continue reading →
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