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Kaieteur News
Friday July 25, 2014
Thousands of Barbadians march Venezuela mortgaged another $4 in protest against solid waste tax billion of its oil exports to China Some of those marching yesterday morning. (Ricardo Leacock)
Xi Jinping and Nicolás Maduro
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - CMC - Thousands of Barbadians took to the streets yesterday to protest against the imposition of the Municipal Solid Waste Tax. The midday march, led by Mia Mottley – leader of the opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP) ended outside the office of Prime Minister, Freundel Stuart, where she delivered a letter of protest on behalf of people across the island. “Today is about sending a message to the government about this bad
Solid Waste Tax that they need to repeal and rethink,” Mottley said before proceeding to Prime Minister Stuart’s office. “The people of Barbados have spoken across the length and breadth, that we’ve had 27 other taxes and fees imposed on us in the last six years. We can take no more.” “This march is for the repeal of the Solid Waste Tax. This march is for a new government mechanism that allows us…as Bajans not to be surprised by a tax, not to be unfaired [sic] by a tax.
“But we say we know we are in trouble as a nation. Talk to your people Freundel, and let us work with you. “And if you cannot talk to your people and let us work with you, do the decent thing and step one side.” This new tax was announced last year with a sweeping .03 per cent charge on the site value of real estate property across the island, but there have been widespread complaints about the financial burden it places on residents.
Warner to pay $220,000 in defamation suit Trinidad Express - LEADER of the Independent Liberal Party (ILP) Jack Warner, was yesterday ordered to pay Councillor in the Chaguanas Borough Corporation Faaiq Mohammed $220,000 in damages, after he accepted liability for accusing the young politician of corruption following last year’s Local Government Elections. In addition to the award of damages, Warner was also ordered to pay Mohammed’s legal cost in the sum of $42,000. The judgement was handed down at the
Hall of Justice in Port of Spain yesterday afternoon by High Court judge Justice Vashiest Kokaram. In the judgement, Kokaram said given that Warner had accepted liability for making the statements, it was clear that Mohammed was falsely accused of being corrupt. The allegations made by Warner came after Mohammed after he voted for the United National Congress’ (UNC) candidate for the post of presiding officer at the first meeting of the Chaguanas Borough Corporation.
Mottley fails to meet PM Barbados Nation OPPOSITION LEADER Mia Mottley has described as “utter folly” that she was greeted by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart’s driver Sergeant Glen Bradshaw when she went to deliver a letter following the protest march through Bridgetown. Mottley made the comments to the media after waiting for ten minutes in her
unsuccessful attempt to hand-deliver her protest letter to Stuart. The Opposition Leader, accompanied by some of her parliamentary colleagues and Barbados Labour Party (BLP) general secretary Dr Jerome Walcott, were met by Sergeant Bradshaw at Government Headquarters. She explained that after waiting and being told that
they would be met by a permanent secretary, the group decided to leave the Bay Street headquarters of Government following the hour-long march and brief rally. According to Mottley, she was there as a representative of the people of Barbados and expressed dissatisfaction with the way the Opposition representatives were treated.
Chinese president Xi Jinping pledged $4 billion in loans to Venezuela while visiting president Nicolás Maduro this week. The agreement will raise Caracas’s existing debts to Beijing by almost 25%, to over $20 billion—money that the country may find it increasingly difficult to repay. China has lent its South American partner more than $40 billion since 2008 to help Caracas shore up its ailing economy, which is expected to slip into a recession this year and has suffered from shortages ranging from medicine to toilet paper. Venezuela has been paying that money back mostly with oil, but that is getting harder to do. Every day, about 500,000 barrels of Venezuelan oil are exported to China, half of which go to pay off the country’s loans from Beijing. As of last month, outstanding debt totaled $17 billion, according to Venezuela’s vice president for the economy. The Maduro administration
plans to pay off the additional loans by producing and exporting more oil—an additional 100,000 barrels (paywall) a day. Venezuela sits on the world’s largest proven oil reserves. But Venezuela has had trouble meeting production targets in the past, and production has been falling over the past decade, in part because of strikes in 2002-03 and the government reinvesting less in the industry. Output of petroleum and other liquids and condensates has fallen to 2.49 million barrels a day last year, from a little under 3 million in 2004, according to the US Energy Information Administration’s estimates. This has meant Venezuela has had to cut back on its shipments and sales to other major markets, namely the United States. Last year, Venezuela’s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela sent more oil to Asia than North America for the first time, with sales to Asia rising 11% while sales to North America,
mainly to the US, alling 12%. In April, Venezuelan oil exports to the US were at the lowest point in 18 years. “Sales to China may be increasing,” Fernando Sanchez, vice president of the Society of Venezuelan Petroleum Engineers told Bloomberg that same month. “But the company doesn’t earn money from them. The US is where they sell oil for money.” So far, Sino-Venezuelan ties seem as stable as when Hugo Chávez, an ally of Beijing’s, was still leading the country. Aside from an embarrassing rendition of Venezuela’s national anthem, Xi’s state visit to Caracas went on without a hitch. The two state leaders signed about 38 economic agreements, deals to explore mining reserves, expand public transport, and launch another Venezuelan satellite. But with an increasing amount of Venezuelan oil going to repay its debts to China, the relationship may not stay unstrained for long. (Quartz from RSS)
Jump-starting Japan relationship Trinidad Guardian - Next week’s visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Port-of-Spain—on the second leg of a fivenation tour of Latin America and the Caribbean—certainly cements T&T’s place as the diplomatic capital of the region. The Japanese Prime Minister, who is visiting Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Brazil, along with T&T, from today to August 2, is making an historic first trip by a Japanese leader to T&T. Prime Minister Abe’s visit to T&T will obviously be seen in the context of the visits here
last year by Chinese President Xi Jinping and US Vice President Joe Biden. But the real background to T&T’s leadership role—as the medium through which the world speaks to the 15 members of Caricom—is the hosting here in 2009 of the Summit of the Americas and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Another signal of T&T’s leadership role was the fact that several Caribbean leaders accepted the T&T Prime Minister’s invitation to accompany her on the CAL aircraft to the funeral last year of South Africa’s Nelson
Mandela. The fact that world leaders come to Portof- Spain when they want to talk to the Caribbean should not be used by Trinidadians as a source of cheap, chestbeating, oneupmanship over our regional brothers and sisters. Instead, in her talks with Prime Minister Abe, Prime Minister Kamla PersadBissessar ought to embrace the role as the region’s goto leader by leveraging the renewed relationship with Japan to assist in the improvement of the economies of our Caribbean neighbours first.