The Cool Truth, Conrad

International Financial Center. Cool name. But it is not cool to practice, at the highest level of this Center, Level 26, the rooms housing the Ministry of Energy, financial imprudence, malfeasance and misdirection of the lowest order. It is not cool to embark on highly capital intensive, energy intensive without conducting due diligence studies; it is not cool to do high consumption health and ecological projects without a cost benefit analysis. Nor is it cool to fail, for every single year for four years, to provide an audited statement of accounts for this project, as is required by laws established by the Investments Division of the Ministry of Finance.

And it is definitely uncool to misdirect the public and the media telling them that a speech by Dr Lenny Saith, a compilation of articles by Professor Clement Sankat, and a listing of ideas by Professor Ken Julien and Mr Philip Julien, constitute either a cost benefit analysis, or an account sheet. These things are not cool to do because, finance, like water, or carbon, travel. Just as high carbon emissions in smelter and steel (1,900,000 tons per year) impact on poverty in Haiti, or sea level rise in Bangladesh, a credit crunch in Wall street, a center of finance, could trigger a global recession. The real reason for this credit crunch, as articulated by Washington, and by economists such as Professor Joseph Stiglitz, was false accounting: financial imprudence, malfeasance and misdirection by financial leaders. The top floor of the International Financial Center must really do the cool thing: tell the truth. Tell the truth using the method which has been devised by financial theorists and managers to determine the feasibility of projects: the figures and facts of a cost benefit analysis. Tell the cool truth by employing the method used by theorists of accounting to provide control and substantiation: the figures on an accounting sheet. What have been the costs factored in for smelter: the loss of three dams; 1000 acres of forest, beekeeping industries, farms and orchards; the loss of oil wells and well capping; infrastructural costs; the costs of loans for smelter, power plant and port; relocation loans for at least three communities; the cost of gas subsidies to the power plant for the supply of electricity to smelter; the costs of salaries to Alutrint for four and a half years; legal costs (high court, appeal court, English QC); the costs of rod mill, cable and wire plants; the costs of technical services, engineering, soil testing and consultancies; Environmental Impact Assessments costs; administrative costs borne by the EMA, the NGC, the NEC, the Ministry of Energy? And propaganda costs for public relations events, “consultations”, newsletters, media ads and programs, bussing in supporters, jerseys, sponsorship of football, fetes and food; the cost of raw materials, all of which, save scarce gas and water, will be imported; the cost of producing a ton of aluminium compared to costs in China, Venezuela etc; the foreign or local disposal of the dangerous spent pot lining; the costs of transportation, marketing, the transformation of aluminium ingots, particularly in view of the fact that Alutrint has lost its 40% partner SURAL; the health and carbon costs? What method has been used to evaluate health and carbon costs? What measure has been used to evaluate costs acknowledged by all Alutrint’s consultants: the smelter will impact negatively on baseline levels for human health, soil, water, air and vegetation. And carbon costs? What is Alutrint going to pay for its millions of tons of carbon emissions? 80 US$ per ton, 100$, 150 US$? Could Alutrint, the Ministry of Energy, the National Energy Corporation, Professor Ken Julien and Dr Lenny Saith refute the irrefutable evidence that smelter, if properly accounted for, would not gain a single copper cent for the peoples, communities or government of Trinidad and Tobago? Could it refute the clear evidence afforded by our most senior economists that smelter is the wrong economic fit for Trinidad and Tobago? The top floor of International Finance Center must understand its fiduciary responsibilities: it must account not just to the people of La Brea, but to the people of Trinidad and Tobago and the international community. It’s just not cool to attempt to hide and prevaricate on financial and carbon accounting anymore. Hiding the first could crash the global economy, prevaricating on the second would crash the human species. Wayne Kublalsingh University of the West Indies St Augustine