On Mon­day, at a cot­tage meet­ing in Las Lo­mas, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made a num­ber of alarm­ing al­le­ga­tions con­cern­ing cost over­runs and de­lays on the con­struc­tion of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar read from doc­u­ments in­di­cat­ing that the orig­i­nal sum for the con­struc­tion of the new air­port, an up­grade to the ex­ist­ing air­port and as­so­ci­at­ed works was $912.03 mil­lion (US$134.12 mil­lion). Added to this sum was $74.77 mil­lion for the orig­i­nal con­sul­tant, CEP Ltd, and the project man­ag­er, Nid­co, as well as an al­lo­ca­tion of $300 mil­lion for land ac­qui­si­tion in the Crown Point area. The to­tal project cost, ac­cord­ing to the Op­po­si­tion politi­cian’s cal­cu­la­tions, was $1.286 bil­lion (US$189.23 mil­lion).

In a re­port com­mis­sioned by the Min­istry of Fi­nance, but paid for by the de­vel­op­ment bank, CAF, the in­ter­na­tion­al con­struc­tion con­sul­tants, Mott Mac­Don­ald, said the orig­i­nal cost of the air­port project would be US$148.954 mil­lion ($1.01 bil­lion) and would take 24 months.

“There are al­so a num­ber of claims to be re­solved and cost over­runs tak­ing the pro­ject­ed cost to US$192.353 mil­lion (US$1.308 bil­lion),” ac­cord­ing to the Mott Mac­Don­ald re­port, which was based on an on-site vis­it to To­ba­go and Trinidad in De­cem­ber 2023 and video con­fer­ence calls in Jan­u­ary 2024. That is a pro­ject­ed cost over­run of close to $300 mil­lion or about 29 per cent.

Prin­ci­pal among the al­le­ga­tions made by Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is that the cost of the con­struc­tion of the new air­port in To­ba­go is $431.16 mil­lion over bud­get. It is now for the for­mer prime min­is­ter to ex­plain the dif­fer­ence be­tween her es­ti­mate of cost over­runs this week and those made by the con­sul­tants she cit­ed on Mon­day.

The sec­ond main point made by Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is that the project is suf­fer­ing from de­layed de­liv­ery of 1,127 days. That is more than three years.

That as­sess­ment seems to ig­nore the fact that the of­fi­cial sign­ing of the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tract with Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Ltd took place on Jan­u­ary 28, 2020 and that T&T, and much of the world, would have been locked down from March of that year. Sure­ly, the COVID-19 re­stric­tions would have im­pact­ed the con­struc­tion time­line of the To­ba­go air­port.

Giv­en the Gov­ern­ment’s prog­no­sis that the next two years are go­ing to be “chal­leng­ing” and “dif­fi­cult” for the pop­u­la­tion of this coun­try, any al­le­ga­tions of cost over­runs have to be thor­ough­ly and com­plete­ly ad­dressed by the Gov­ern­ment.

In a state­ment last night, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ac­knowl­edged “there have been some el­e­ments of vari­a­tion” in the ex­e­cu­tion of the air­port con­struc­tion project, which he said “is not un­com­mon in projects of this size and scope.”

Dr Row­ley al­so said the Gov­ern­ment “is in a po­si­tion to jus­ti­fy every cent that it takes to es­tab­lish the fa­cil­i­ty,” and that Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert will re­port soon on the fi­nanc­ing and op­er­a­tions of the project.

The na­tion looks for­ward to the ac­count­ing and trans­paren­cy im­plic­it in the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment and hopes the clar­i­fi­ca­tions and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions come soon­er rather than lat­er.

The com­ple­tion of the air­port in To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to boost in­ter­est by ho­tel de­vel­op­ers in con­struct­ing new first-class ho­tels on the is­land. The air­port, there­fore, is cru­cial to the de­vel­op­ment of the tourism sec­tor in To­ba­go and to the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the T&T econ­o­my and it ought not to be shroud­ed in al­le­ga­tions of cost over­runs.