Ef­fec­tive June 1, the Air­port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) will in­crease its Pas­sen­ger Ser­vice charge (for­mer­ly De­par­ture Tax) from $100 to $200. The de­ci­sion to hike the price was tak­en by the AATT board at a Feb­ru­ary 2 meet­ing, Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj con­firmed yes­ter­day.

The last in­crease, Ma­haraj said, was ten years ago. "We have no choice. If some­body has to wor­ry about a $100 in­crease as they buy a tick­et to go away they would have oth­er prob­lems in­volved. I think the new fee is rea­son­able." He said the in­crease was small com­pared to the prices peo­ple paid for visas and air­line tick­ets.

Ma­haraj said he would ex­am­ine cost against rev­enue with re­gard to all agen­cies un­der him. The air­port, Ma­haraj said, bare­ly earns enough from the col­lec­tion of fares and fees. Plans, Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands, are al­so in the pipeline to in­crease the con­course fee from $45 to $65, which Ma­haraj said he was un­aware of.

In or­der to ful­fil its man­date to pro­vide safe and se­cure avi­a­tion fa­cil­i­ties and to gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al rev­enue to meet in­creased salaries and main­te­nance cost, Ma­haraj said the AATT rec­om­mend­ed that the de­par­ture tax be changed. The AATT es­ti­mates pas­sen­ger move­ment of 843,078 from Oc­to­ber 2011 to 2012.

Yes­ter­day, sev­er­al trav­el agen­cies com­plained that they were un­aware of the in­crease. Ma­haraj said the hike was to ful­ly re­cov­er the cost of the pro­vi­sion of se­cu­ri­ty at the in­ter­na­tion­al check­point, stat­ing that the AATT had nev­er col­lect­ed any fees for the pro­vi­sion of se­cu­ri­ty checks at the do­mes­tic fa­cil­i­ties.

In the 2008, the De­par­ture Tax was re­placed by the Pas­sen­ger Ser­vice charge on each in­di­vid­ual trav­el tick­et with the ex­cep­tion of tick­ets is­sued to those in­di­vid­u­als who were ex­empt­ed from the pay­ment of the tax un­der the ex­ist­ing law. The De­par­ture Tax com­pris­es a se­cu­ri­ty fee of $25 and a pay­ment of $75 to the con­sol­i­dat­ed fund.

The AATT was paid a com­mis­sion of 5 per cent by the Trans­port Min­istry on the col­lec­tion of the $75. Ma­haraj said the break-even charge for the se­cu­ri­ty charge was es­ti­mat­ed at $73.90 per pas­sen­ger. He ex­plained that the pro­ject­ed se­cu­ri­ty cost from Oc­to­ber 2011 to Sep­tem­ber 2012 by the AATT was es­ti­mat­ed at $18 mil­lion.

The AATT pro­ject­ed a deficit of $46 mil­lion from Oc­to­ber 2011 to Sep­tem­ber 2012 for se­cu­ri­ty fees, goods and ser­vices, al­lo­cat­ed per­son­nel cost and de­pre­ci­a­tion.