If the State is to re­vis­it and fund the San­dals mega-project in To­ba­go, the ho­tel must pay prop­er rates of tax and rates of pay to its staff.

There ought to be no tax hol­i­days or con­ces­sions if the en­tire com­plex is to be fund­ed by pub­lic mon­ey and on pub­licly owned land.

That’s ac­cord­ing to for­mer head of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) Afra Ray­mond, re­spond­ing to for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s state­ments on March 15 that he has per­son­al­ly reached out to the San­dals’ own­er with a plea to take an­oth­er look at the is­land.

“I didn’t give up af­ter all that (first failed at­tempt). Re­cent­ly, I spoke to the lead­er­ship at San­dals, and I asked them to come look at this again, and if I was the prob­lem, I wouldn’t be there mov­ing for­ward,” Row­ley said, at the com­mis­sion­ing of To­ba­go’s new ter­mi­nal of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port..

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, San­dals has agreed to send its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Adam Stew­art to To­ba­go in Au­gust to re­assess the is­land’s tourism po­ten­tial.

Ray­mond, who is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Ray­mond & Pierre Ltd, char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­ors and prop­er­ty con­sul­tants, was re­spond­ing to Busi­ness Guardian ques­tions on the re­newed dis­cus­sions with San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al.

He said it is an ear­ly stage in which the hote­lier seems to have agreed to restart dis­cus­sions with T&T Of­fi­cials.

“Of course, I am very skep­ti­cal about those po­lit­i­cal state­ments, es­pe­cial­ly since this is the same Gov­ern­ment that fought me very hard to pre­vent the re­lease of that To­ba­go San­dals Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) while at the same time, Dr Row­ley and Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­peat­ed­ly told us that there is no se­cret agree­ment. Even the San­dals com­pa­ny joined in the re­frain about there be­ing no se­cret, but it took my law­suit un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act to force the re­lease of that dam­ag­ing doc­u­ment,” Ray­mond said.

The MoU, he said, was signed by Sham­fa Cud­joe, the then Min­is­ter of Tourism on Oc­to­ber 10, 2017. The pro­vi­sions of the doc­u­ment were so very ad­van­ta­geous to San­dals that he could scarce­ly be­lieve that the Min­is­ter took prop­er ad­vice.

“To my eyes, and this is cer­tain­ly with­in my pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­tence, this has to be the most one-sided such agree­ment I have seen and it is lit­tle won­der that the San­dals of­fi­cials were smil­ing so wide­ly in every pho­to. They stopped smil­ing once the MoU was pub­lished and prop­er­ly ex­plained to the pub­lic. Both San­dals CEO Geb­hard Rain­er and Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young were very som­bre at the Jan­u­ary 15, 2019, press con­fer­ence to an­nounce the with­draw­al of San­dals. It all just goes to show that sun­light is the best dis­in­fec­tant,” he said.

Giv­ing fur­ther de­tails on the con­tent of the MOU he fought to be made pub­lic, Ray­mond said it pro­vid­ed for the re­sort to be de­signed, built, fit­ted, and fur­nished, all at pub­lic ex­pense and on pub­licly owned land.

In ad­di­tion, he out­lined the MoU spec­i­fied that San­dals was en­ti­tled to un­lim­it­ed work per­mits for non-TT work­ers, ex­ten­sive tax hol­i­days, du­ty con­ces­sions, and the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of trans­fer pric­ing.

“Giv­en the fact that the en­tire fi­nan­cial cost of this project was to be fund­ed by pub­lic mon­ey and the ex­ten­sive con­ces­sions to San­dals, one is en­ti­tled to ask just how this project would have been to our ben­e­fit...Any rea­son­able-think­ing per­son would want to know that,” said Ray­mond.

“That was a unique­ly ex­ploita­tive deal for our coun­try, so there ought to be sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in the terms of any new San­dals deal,” he added

Ray­mond said his hopes are not high that there would be sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in the San­dals terms since, apart from false­ly claim­ing that there was noth­ing to hide, the pro­mot­ers of that scheme have been un­able and/or un­will­ing to de­fend those detri­men­tal pro­pos­als,” Ray­mond de­tailed.

Busi­ness Guardian reached out to San­dals com­pa­ny on the pro­posed meet­ing, but of­fi­cials were un­avail­able up to the dead­line of this Busi­ness Guardian pub­li­ca­tion.

In de­liv­er­ing the 2025 bud­get, for­mer Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert de­scribed the pro­pos­al to re-en­gage San­dals as one of the spe­cial projects the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to un­der­take in the cur­rent fis­cal year. Among these projects are: “A re­quest for pro­pos­als to de­vel­op a new five-star in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed re­sort ho­tel on the Gov­ern­ment-owned Buc­coo Es­tate in To­ba­go. This project is ex­pect­ed to be on the scale of the pre­vi­ous­ly pro­posed San­dals Ho­tel and if suc­cess­ful, will bring tremen­dous eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of To­ba­go

Busi­ness Guardian reached out to An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne on whether it would be a good move to have San­dals Re­sort In­ter­na­tion­al in To­ba­go.

He said, “San­dals is a good Caribbean brand that all re­gion­al gov­ern­ments should be hap­py to sup­port, pro­vid­ed: that they do not de­mand un­rea­son­able tax con­ces­sions, pay their fair share of tax­es, free of ma­nip­u­la­tions and that staff are prop­er­ly re­mu­ner­at­ed and be al­lowed to keep their tips, to boost their in­come.”

Last No­vem­ber, Browne called on the lux­u­ry ho­tel brand to pay its out­stand­ing tax­es.

When ques­tioned about this sit­u­a­tion, the An­tiguan leader said San­dals was pay­ing 35 per cent of the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Sales Tax (AB­ST) mon­ey and hold­ing on to 65 per cent as an in­cen­tive.

He not­ed this was an agree­ment that they had with the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, which his gov­ern­ment re­voked.

“They en­joyed that usu­ri­ous arrange­ment pre­vi­ous­ly re­sult­ing in a loss in the tax yield by US$37 mil­lion, which we wrote off. This is in ad­di­tion to the cor­po­rate tax-free hol­i­days that they have en­joyed for the past 40 years with an­oth­er 20 years of cor­po­rate tax-free hol­i­days,” said Browne.

He said An­tigua and Bar­bu­da has a cur­rent dis­pute with San­dals over the sig­nif­i­cant de­duc­tions they made to the AB­ST re­turns, re­sult­ing in an as­sess­ment by the In­land Rev­enue De­part­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly EC$30 mil­lion (US$11 mil­lion).

“We would like them to be less bru­tal in shar­ing the gains. The gov­ern­ment has in­vit­ed them to set­tle the is­sue am­i­ca­bly, even though the mat­ter is in court,” Browne dis­closed.

Talk­ing about the Ja­maica-based San­dals Re­sort, Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Tourism, Ed­mund Bartlett, said the San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al is one of the coun­try’s largest em­ploy­ers of labour, and they con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the rev­enue of the coun­try.

There are sev­en all-in­clu­sive adults-on­ly San­dals in Ja­maica and Bartlett said the mod­el used by the com­pa­ny in Ja­maica is that it has built and out­fit­ted the ho­tels, along with em­ploy­ing Ja­maicans.

When asked about the com­pa­ny pay­ing its tax­es in Ja­maica, Bartlett said Ja­maica has no prob­lem with their tax­es be­ing paid, when due.

While he did not have the ac­tu­al per­cent­age of growth off-hand, Bartlett said the in­ter­na­tion­al brand has con­tributed to tourism boost year­ly.

On what ad­vice he would prof­fer to To­ba­go should the coun­try re­vis­it San­dals set­ting up shop on the is­land, he said “Hon­est­ly, San­dals would be a game-chang­er for To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly, hav­ing Caribbean Air­lines as a do­mes­tic car­ri­er with an in­ter­na­tion­al flavour.

“So I think Caribbean Air­lines would ben­e­fit great­ly too from a San­dals pres­ence there and the air­port be­ing com­plet­ed is a pos­i­tive for tourist traf­fic.”