A US$1.5 mil­lion agree­ment aimed at im­prov­ing the Port of Port-of-Spain (PPOS) has been signed be­tween this coun­try’s gov­ern­ment and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

In a re­lease from the IDB yes­ter­day, it was con­firmed that T&T’s gov­ern­ment had agreed to the con­di­tions of tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion to the mon­e­tary worth of US$1.5 mil­lion from the IDB’s con­tin­gent re­cov­ery fi­nanc­ing tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion for the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT).

The agree­ment was signed by Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les with Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Ro­han Sinanan and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Allyson West present as wit­ness­es, the re­lease said.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank Ca­ri­na Cock­burn pre­sent­ed the let­ter of agree­ment to be signed.

“The pur­pose of the ini­tia­tive is to pro­vide sup­port to the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T (GoRTT) in the struc­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ties for a Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship Project (PPP) for the Car­go Han­dling Op­er­a­tions of PATT, where the PPOS is the first and ma­jor mul­ti-pur­pose port of the coun­try, strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed at the cross­roads of ma­jor trade links via the Pana­ma Canal,” a re­lease from the IDB stat­ed.

The IDB ex­plained this agree­ment would lead to the fund­ing of fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies (tech­ni­cal, fi­nan­cial, le­gal) to de­sign the best mod­el and de­fine the frame­work for bid­ders to present their pro­pos­als as well as fi­nal fi­nan­cial, tech­ni­cal, and le­gal struc­ture, and draft­ing of PPP con­tracts, and bid­ding doc­u­ments.

The IDB said it would al­so pro­vide sup­port to the Gov­ern­ment in the bid­ding process un­til the com­mer­cial close (sig­na­ture of the PPP con­tract).

The Gov­ern­ment has voiced plans to up­grade PPOS in­fra­struc­ture through pri­vate in­vest­ments, which it is hoped, will en­hance the port’s com­pet­i­tive­ness amongst re­gion­al com­peti­tors.

The IDB said, “The project fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies un­der the pro­posed Project Prepa­ra­tion and Struc­tur­ing Ac­tiv­i­ties (PP­SA) will sup­port the gov­ern­ment in the struc­tur­ing process for a po­ten­tial Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) for the Car­go Han­dling Op­er­a­tions of the PPOS. The ul­ti­mate goal of the Project is to pro­mote T&T’s eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment by im­prov­ing port ef­fi­cien­cy and com­pet­i­tive­ness in the coun­try through a PPP in line with the Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy (Vi­sion 2030) 2016-2030, “Im­prov­ing Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through Qual­i­ty In­fra­struc­ture and Trans­porta­tion.”