Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

OAS Con­struc­to­ra, the Brazil­ian firm con­struct­ing the $7.5 bil­lion Solomon Ho­choy high­way ex­ten­sion has pur­chased eight 20-tonne ex­ca­va­tors at a cost of US$1.5 mil­lion for work on the project. The equip­ment was pur­chased from FT Far­fan Lim­it­ed, sole lo­cal agents for JCB con­struc­tion equip­ment.

At a hand­ing over cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day, OAS equip­ment man­ag­er Car­los Al­bu­querque said it made eco­nom­ic sense to pur­chase the equip­ment rather than rent it from lo­cal con­trac­tors. "When we buy brand new ma­chines it is bet­ter when rent from the con­trac­tor be­cause at the end of the year, I would have paid al­most the cost of one brand new ma­chine," he said adding that cut­ting costs had been part of his job since he joined OAS in 1988.

Al­bu­querque said the ma­chines were bought at a spe­cial dis­count. Asked about the chal­lenges be­ing faced by OAS, Al­bu­querque said the biggest was bad weath­er. An­oth­er prob­lem was that re­lo­ca­tion process was still on­go­ing and hous­es had to be moved along the Debe, Mon De­sir and Point Fortin routes. he di­rect­ed fur­ther queries about the high­way's route to of­fi­cials of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T (Nid­co).

In­dus­tri­al sales di­rec­tor at FT Far­fan Derek Cum­mings said the pur­chase of the equip­ment au­gured well for lo­cal con­tent. He said the high­way project would last be­tween four to five years so it was eco­nom­i­cal for the com­pa­ny to pur­chase its own equip­ment.

"They have tak­en a busi­ness de­ci­sion to in­vest in more equip­ment and we thank them for buy­ing from lo­cal op­er­a­tors like our­selves. We are not the on­ly com­pa­ny that sup­plied equip­ment to the job," he said. Cum­mings ex­pressed hope that there would be fur­ther busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal com­pa­nies.