Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

T&T has the po­ten­tial to be part of a well-con­nect­ed re­gion­al port trans­porta­tion sys­tem, fa­cil­i­tat­ing trav­el among the is­lands.

This is among the find­ings of a re­port ti­tled, “Pro­pos­al for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a fer­ry ser­vice through Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships (PPP’s) in the East­ern Caribbean Re­gion” by the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

It said in the Caribbean, fer­ry ser­vices are an im­por­tant al­ter­na­tive to im­prove con­nec­tiv­i­ty, but the op­tions cur­rent­ly of­fered are usu­al­ly op­er­at­ed over short dis­tances and be­tween is­lands of the same coun­try or its neigh­bours, with very few ex­cep­tions such as the route be­tween Puer­to Ri­co and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it said air trans­porta­tion ser­vices in the Caribbean are ex­pen­sive, main­ly im­pact­ed by the small and frag­ment­ed size of the mar­ket, with high costs, low fre­quen­cy, and in­con­ve­nient itin­er­aries, be­ing a bar­ri­er to re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

The av­er­age air­line rev­enue per pas­sen­ger and per kilo­me­tre is much high­er than the glob­al av­er­age. More­over, in­tra-re­gion­al fig­ures are gen­er­al­ly even high­er than the ex­tra-re­gion­al rev­enue, the re­port said.

It fur­ther not­ed that tax­es, fees, and charges in the re­gion are al­so high and rep­re­sent ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 per cent of the cost of a one-way air­fare, much high­er that the world­wide av­er­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 per cent.

To as­sess the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a fer­ry ser­vice that could im­prove con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the East­ern Caribbean, the re­port pro­vid­ed a tech­ni­cal pro­pos­al of four dif­fer­ent routes, with the eval­u­a­tion of its pos­si­ble eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits, im­pacts, and lim­i­ta­tions.

The study al­so con­sid­ers that both the cur­rent port in­fra­struc­ture and the con­nec­tiv­i­ty ser­vices avail­able in the re­gion are not ad­e­quate and would re­quire in­vest­ments to han­dle the high­er vol­umes of pas­sen­gers and car­go as it analysed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in the de­vel­op­ment of such a sys­tem or gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for the fi­nanc­ing and op­er­a­tion of fer­ry routes and ports.

Fer­ry ser­vice pro­pos­al

The study rec­om­mend­ed the most dis­tant ports with high­er car­go vol­umes are con­nect­ed through al­ready ex­ist­ing lines in the re­gion, form­ing a ro­ta­tion through the ex­ist­ing ports be­tween Puer­to Ri­co and T&T.

Pos­si­ble in­te­grat­ing ports of small­er Caribbean is­lands would be Cauce­do, lo­cat­ed in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and Port-of-Spain.

It is sug­gest­ed to use the port of Cas­tries, in Saint Lu­cia, as a mi­nor hub, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the con­nec­tiv­i­ty it has with the near­by is­lands.

It out­lined sev­er­al pro­posed routes:

• Route 1: Colom­bia, Aru­ba, Bonaire, Cu­raçao, T&T

• Route 2: T&T, Guyana and Suri­name.

• Route 3: Puer­to Ri­co, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Guadalupe and Saint Lu­cia.

• Route 4: Saint Lu­cia, Saint Vin­cent, Grena­da and T&T

“The first and sec­ond ro­ta­tions would use Port-of-Spain, as a main hub to in­te­grate Colom­bia, Aru­ba, Cu­raçao and Bonaire in one di­rec­tion (Route 1), with Suri­name and Guyana in the oth­er (Route 2).

“The third and fourth ro­ta­tions use the port of Cas­tries, in Saint Lu­cia, as sec­ondary hub. To the north, it would con­nect Puer­to Ri­co through An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Guade­loupe (Route 3).

“To the south, through Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to Port-of-Spain. It in­te­grates these is­lands in­to the ro­ta­tion of the main line,” the study said, not­ing this ser­vice pro­pos­al was based on the mar­itime trade al­ready in place 2019 be­tween each lo­ca­tion.

Chair­man of the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT) re­tired Col Lyle Alexan­der told the Busi­ness Guardian that the fa­cil­i­ty al­ready stands out as one of the most con­nect­ed in the re­gion.

“We have traf­fic go­ing through­out the Caribbean to Eu­rope to the west go­ing to the US to the Pana­ma Canal so we are al­ready iden­ti­fied with­in the sec­tor as very con­nect­ed,” Alexan­der ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted more can be done to im­prove the port’s ca­pac­i­ty giv­en its cur­rent lim­it­ed size.

“From the phys­i­cal point of view the in­fra­struc­ture is al­ways an is­sue. If we are able to at­tract more move­ment through the port that will of course help us so the ar­eas that can im­pact the im­prove­ment will be in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment that can be as wide as it is broad,” Alexan­der de­tailed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there must al­so be lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port.

Ac­cord­ing to the port’s chair­man there must be greater ef­fi­cien­cy re­gard­ing pro­cess­ing which will al­so be more at­trac­tive to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Asked when im­prove­ments to the port’s in­fra­struc­ture can be­gin Alexan­der said a “lot of mov­ing parts are re­quired.”

“And es­pe­cial­ly when you are op­er­at­ing with­in the pub­lic ser­vice-type fi­nanc­ing sit­u­a­tion sys­tem that im­pacts the speed at which things can hap­pen,” Alexan­der ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he agreed that PPPs are a good start to get things go­ing, say­ing if there’s an in­vestor with fund­ing some of the de­lays, for in­stance, will not ap­ply.

But giv­ing a time­line to ex­pand the port to cre­ate greater ca­pac­i­ty could not be giv­en.

“It is not a sim­ple an­swer to say by next week or by next two years. That gives the wrong im­pres­sion and the re­al­i­ty is there are things to be done that re­quire fi­nanc­ing and there are process­es in­volved in that. Do­ing that in the pub­lic space is not al­ways as speedy as we would like it to be,” Alexan­der re­it­er­at­ed.

Re­gard­ing new routes from the port he ex­plained these are not de­pen­dent on the fa­cil­i­ty it­self.

Rather, these de­pend on the ship­pers and where they need to go.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der said there are on­go­ing dis­cus­sions to es­tab­lish mar­itime routes through­out the Caribbean aimed at im­prov­ing the re­gion’s food se­cu­ri­ty.

Air trans­porta­tion progress

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell who said there has al­so been progress in the re­cov­ery of the air trans­port and tourism sec­tors as, in Oc­to­ber 2021, KLM in­tro­duced a new route be­tween Am­s­ter­dam, Nether­lands and Port-of-Spain which has been re­ceiv­ing pos­i­tive re­views.

He added Con­dor Air­lines re­sumed flights be­tween Frank­furt, Ger­many to Crown Point, To­ba­go in No­vem­ber 2022, over the win­ter sea­son, and flights are ex­pect­ed to end in April 2023.

“British Air­ways has an­nounced plans to op­er­ate non-stop flights be­tween Gatwick, UK and Port-of-Spain ef­fec­tive March 26, 2023. Fur­ther progress has been made as new air­lines have in­di­cat­ed in­ter­est in the des­ti­na­tion.

“Air Bel­gium is one such air­line in­ter­est­ed in op­er­at­ing a flight to T&T, fol­low­ing a meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Em­bassy of T&T and Air Bel­gium,” Mitchell said, adding that this is pos­i­tive news for the des­ti­na­tion as the Min­istry of Tourism will con­tin­ue to pur­sue these leads.

The Tourism Min­is­ter al­so agreed that air trans­port lies at the heart of mod­ern, glob­alised economies and is one of the world’s most im­por­tant eco­nom­ic sec­tors, not­ing that avi­a­tion pro­vides the on­ly rapid world­wide trans­porta­tion net­work, which makes it es­sen­tial for glob­al busi­ness and tourism.

Mitchell al­so de­tailed that the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T said air­lines which cur­rent­ly pro­vide ser­vice in­to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in­clude Amer­i­can Air­lines, British Air­ways, Caribbean Air­lines, CO­PA, Jet Blue, Unit­ed Air­lines, KLM and Con­dor—ser­vice sched­uled for the win­ter sea­son, cov­er­ing No­vem­ber 20, 2022 to April 23, 2023.

The Tourism Min­is­ter al­so not­ed that the au­thor­i­ty fur­ther in­di­cat­ed that for­eign air­lines which were for­mer­ly pro­vid­ing ser­vice orig­i­nat­ing from Toron­to, Cana­da, Cara­cas, Venezuela and Para­mari­bo, Suri­name (West Jet, Suri­name Air­ways and RU­TA­CA) have not recom­menced ser­vice to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Crown Point, To­ba­go.

Suri­nam Air­ways has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to rein­tro­duce flights to T&T in March af­ter sus­pend­ing its ser­vices last May.

He said Caribbean Air­lines is pro­vid­ing sched­uled flights be­tween Toron­to, Cana­da and Port-of-Spain and Para­mari­bo, Suri­name and Port-of-Spain.

“CO­PA of­fers in­di­rect ser­vice to Cara­cas, Venezuela via Pana­ma. Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Crown Point, To­ba­go con­tin­ue to re­ceive ser­vice by British Air­ways from Gatwick via St Lu­cia,” Mitchell added.