Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The ex­it of Methanex—the world’s largest pro­duc­er and sup­pli­er of methanol—re­moves mil­lions of dol­lars in po­ten­tial methanol ex­ports from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, along with bil­lions in for­eign ex­change earn­ings, while threat­en­ing jobs and in­vestor con­fi­dence, for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath says.

“The ham­mer blow an­nounce­ment that Methanex will in­def­i­nite­ly idle its Ti­tan methanol plant should serve as a wake-up call rather than sim­ply an­oth­er un­for­tu­nate busi­ness de­ci­sion. Whether the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands or ac­cepts this fact will have sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly since every large petro­chem­i­cal plant sup­ports an ex­ten­sive ecosys­tem of busi­ness­es and em­ploy­ees,” Bharath said yes­ter­day.