The yacht­ing sec­tor should be seen as one of the in­dus­tries to help with the for­eign ex­change crunch the coun­try has been fac­ing for the past decade.

That’s the view of vice pres­i­dent of the Ma­rine Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Jesse James, who said it is such a low-hang­ing fruit to be picked as it would help make Trinidad an at­trac­tive des­ti­na­tion for the yachties to come and sim­ply spend their mon­ey. At­tract­ing more yachties would al­so cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the skilled and un­skilled work­ers in Trinidad.

James said as Trinidad is be­low the hur­ri­cane belt, Hur­ri­cane Beryl re­sult­ed in close to 200 yachts from Grena­da and Car­ri­a­cou flee­ing to Ch­aguara­mas for shel­ter, which he led to an uptick for the in­dus­try.

He not­ed that all gov­ern­ment agen­cies came to­geth­er to sup­ply food and oth­er items, but said the prob­lem this coun­try con­tin­ues to have is the long time in takes for the Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sions to clear the yachties.

“Ch­aguara­mas, with its se­clud­ed and safe har­bour, has proven at­trac­tive to yachties over the decades and even to­day, as was seen dur­ing Beryl.”

How­ev­er, James lament­ed that for 25 plus years the sec­tor has been clam­our­ing for a sin­gle har­monised form that can be ac­cessed on­line by vis­i­tors, which will al­low them to check in ahead of ar­rival, sav­ing them hours of fill­ing out pa­per­work when they ar­rive. It al­so can be used to in­form the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties be­fore­hand of the vis­it­ing yacht or leisure craft.

He said oth­er coun­tries are us­ing Sail­Clear, which al­lows the cap­tain to send the re­quired in­for­ma­tion to bor­der agen­cies be­fore ar­rival or de­par­ture.

“We need for all the dif­fer­ent agen­cies to work to­geth­er, in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate mak­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness with these cruis­ers easy.”

In nar­row­ing the kind of US ex­pen­di­ture the yachties in­ject, James said with about 800 yachts com­ing a year, many cruis­ers are spend­ing be­tween US$200,000 and $400,000 for ma­jor over­hauls on re­pairs and new equip­ment.  

“I mean, this is big dol­lars you’re talk­ing about, and it is right there for us to take. And, you know, every­body, every sin­gle yachter that comes here, once they use their cred­it card, it goes in­to the sys­tem. So that it’s for­eign ex­change com­ing in,” he ex­plained.

The cruis­ers he out­lined al­so go on tours and pur­chase dif­fer­ent lo­cal jew­el­ry and items.

James stressed that the coun­try is in a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion for for­eign ex­change and the stream­lin­ing of the forms is a sim­ple fix for Ch­aguara­mas.

Fur­ther, he said all the oth­er is­lands are do­ing it and they are now reap­ing the ben­e­fits from it and more yachts are go­ing to those is­lands, as a re­sult of eas­i­er en­try.

James went on to state that the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, who is the line min­is­ter for the in­dus­try, has been do­ing her part in help­ing to push the sec­tor, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing COVID-19.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sues raised by James, Gopee-Scoon agreed that the en­try form con­tin­ues to be a prob­lem.

“The Sail­Clear sys­tem has not been im­ple­ment­ed and even though the sub­sti­tute for that, which is the sin­gle har­monised form, we got it passed through par­lia­ment. How­ev­er, when it was time to be im­ple­ment­ed one or two of the agen­cies who were to help ex­e­cute this, gave trou­ble, but they are fi­nal­ly back on board and they made all the amend­ments nec­es­sary, but at this stage, we still need more to move to the digi­ti­sa­tion stage.

“The Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al are work­ing on faster en­try in­to this coun­try,” the min­is­ter de­tailed.

Al­so, Gopee-Scoon said that while the sec­tor would help gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change, she out­lined that the lev­el of for­eign ex­change need­ed would not come main­ly from the yacht­ing sec­tor.

“It is still a very small sec­tor. Fo­cus­ing on yacht­ing would not make a big enough dent in it. The dent has to come from your ex­port ser­vices, en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy. We al­so need to ramp up For­eign Di­rect In­vest­ments (FDI). Al­so, there needs to be the full de­vel­op­ment of the mar­itime sec­tor to at­tract big ves­sels like ships to do re­pairs and they al­so pay in US dol­lars,” the min­is­ter added.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert dur­ing his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last month, spoke about the con­struc­tion of a ma­ri­na in To­ba­go.

He said a re­quest would be made to de­vel­op a yacht­ing ma­ri­na in the Low­lands, just south­west of the Pe­tit Trou La­goon, on lands cur­rent­ly be­ing ac­quired by the gov­ern­ment from the Plan­ta­tion Es­tate.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, for­mer An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Tourism Min­is­ter John Mag­in­ley, said that tourism is the main dri­ver of the twin-is­land coun­try’s econ­o­my and when mega yachts came in, there were is­sues en­ter­ing, due to the long process by Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms. Some yachties said they did not want to vis­it again, as a re­sult of the lengthy process.

Mag­ine­ly said the yacht­ing agents reached out to the then gov­ern­ment and af­ter a pe­ri­od of re­search and con­sul­ta­tion, the Sail­Clear sys­tem was im­ple­ment­ed, which made the en­try process much eas­i­er. This was done in 2012.

“You have to make things work as the yacht­ing sec­tor brings in the for­eign ex­change. They eat in restau­rants, rent cars, and go on tours. Since the Sail­clear sys­tem has been im­ple­ment­ed An­tigua has seen an uptick of thou­sands of yachties,” Mag­in­ley high­light­ed.

In a state­ment giv­en to the Busi­ness Guardian, the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Tourism Au­thor­i­ty said, “An­tigua’s Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct in 2023 was US$1.8 bil­lion, some 80 per cent of that comes from tourism. One-third of tourism’s con­tri­bu­tion comes from the yacht­ing sec­tor. In 2023, some 18,568 yacht­ing vis­i­tors ar­rived.”