The search has be­gun to find a pri­vate part­ner to op­er­ate at the Port of Port-of-Spain and the Port of Scar­bor­ough.

“The Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T op­er­at­ing through the Port Au­thor­i­ty (PATT), in­vites in­ter­est from will­ing in­vestors with ex­pe­ri­ence in port in­vest­ments, de­vel­op­ment and op­er­a­tions, ship­ping, lo­gis­tics and cruise op­er­a­tions to pro­pose busi­ness ideas that will sup­port par­tic­i­pa­tion in a PPP Land­lord mod­el project with the PATT, in any or all of the fol­low­ing ar­eas:

a) The car­go op­er­a­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain;

b) The car­go and cruise op­er­a­tions at the Port of Scar­bor­ough;

c) Re­gion­al car­go ac­tiv­i­ties at Cari­com wharves;

d) Cruise ship­ping op­er­a­tions at PATT,” the re­quest for ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est for the po­ten­tial pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP) project stat­ed.

Apart from this the PATT stat­ed that it should be not­ed that a po­ten­tial in­vestor may al­so con­sid­er op­por­tu­ni­ties in ma­rine ser­vices (towage, dredg­ing etc).

“The PATT recog­nis­es that an ef­fec­tive pub­lic-pri­vate agree­ment has the po­ten­tial to not on­ly gen­er­ate rev­enue but al­so pos­i­tive­ly en­hance the ex­pe­ri­ence of Port users, busi­ness­es and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. This Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est (EOI) is en­cour­ag­ing and cre­at­ing the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment for new agree­ment(s) to be cre­at­ed.

“This EOI is de­signed to give all who may be in­ter­est­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pos­si­bly en­gage in a po­ten­tial pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship arrange­ment in the fu­ture,” it stat­ed.

In the last bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was man­dat­ed to take to ra­tio­nalise, by the end of 2021, the op­er­a­tions of the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T and in­tro­duce a pri­vate sec­tor op­er­a­tor in­to the han­dling op­er­a­tions now car­ried out by the Port of Port-of-Spain, leav­ing the fer­ry ser­vice to the T&T In­ter-Is­land Com­pa­ny Ltd and the lands for the Port-of-Spain In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny.