While there have been some de­lays in re­cruit­ing a pri­vate in­vestor for the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT), via a Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) agree­ment, PATT chair­man Lyle Alexan­der is con­fi­dent that an in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestor will be se­lect­ed.

The PPP re­struc­tur­ing process, which was launched in Oc­to­ber 2022 is be­ing done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gov­ern­ment’s ad­vi­sor, the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB).

Speak­ing to the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day at the Port’s head of­fice on Dock Road, Port of Spain, Alexan­der ex­plained the first phase of the ini­tia­tive was to de­ter­mine if the au­thor­i­ty had a bank­able project. With the as­sis­tance of the IDB, it has shown that it is a bank­able project to at­tract an in­vestor.

“In terms of time, there are some steps that we have to go through and be­cause the project is be­ing sup­port­ed by the IDB, there are some things to be done such as get­ting a con­sul­tant and con­trac­tor on board and that is where we had some de­lays in get­ting the ducks in a row.

“A re­cent agree­ment has been signed be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and IDB to take the project for­ward and the next thing that has to be an­nounced is the con­sul­tant that would be work­ing for the IDB to help us build the Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP),” the chair­man re­vealed.

He could not say how long the de­lays with re­gard to the RFP will take, as this is be­ing han­dled by the IDB.

Alexan­der not­ed that af­ter all the analy­ses have in­di­cat­ed that the project po­ten­tial­ly is a US$200 mil­lion in­vest­ment, over some time.

Asked whether the union rep­re­sent­ing the port work­ers Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) was on board with the PPP, the chair­man said the Au­thor­i­ty has not had re­cent con­ver­sa­tions with them, but he does not an­tic­i­pate any sig­nif­i­cant hic­cups and chal­lenges with the union.

“It is not that there will not be, but I think the lev­el of un­der­stand­ing at the mo­ment is there. One ex­pects that there will be ques­tions asked and I cer­tain­ly hope we can an­swer any con­cerns the union may have. Treat­ing the labour is­sue is im­por­tant for both par­ties,” Alexan­der ac­knowl­edged.

As it per­tains to the Port Au­thor­i­ty’s prof­itabil­i­ty, he said up to May 2023, the au­thor­i­ty’s gross rev­enue stood at $154 mil­lion, and the gross ex­pen­di­ture was $120 mil­lion.

Alexan­der high­light­ed that one of the fea­tures of op­er­at­ing a pub­lic port is run­ning at a deficit, but the net deficit this year was $4 mil­lion which showed an im­prove­ment from the pre­vi­ous year, and this is why the po­ten­tial is there for rev­enues to in­crease year on year.

Re­gard­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness, the Port’s act­ing di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er op­er­a­tions, Pa­tri­cia Per­sad said T&T re­cent­ly signed with SO­GET, the French IT ser­vices com­pa­ny,that is go­ing to be help­ing the team im­ple­ment the Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem, which is a re­quire­ment at mod­ern ports.

Per­sad out­lined that Ja­maica and An­tigua al­ready have their Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem up and run­ning and the T&T sys­tem is ex­pect­ed to be im­ple­ment­ed in the next 32 months. This will en­gage all the stake­hold­ers in the port and mar­itime sec­tor.

The Port Com­mu­ni­ty Sys­tem is an elec­tron­ic plat­form that con­nects the bor­der clear­ance IT sys­tems used by the Cus­toms, the ports, the TTBi­zLink plat­form op­er­at­ed by the Min­istry of Trade, and oth­er bor­der clear­ance agen­cies.

Achieve­ments of the port

A hap­py Alexan­der said the port placed third in the No­va­Port Cup, in its in­au­gur­al en­try to the com­pe­ti­tion which was award­ed by the Port Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of the Caribbean (PMAC) an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing late last month.

He said Turks and Caicos came first for the most im­proved port per­for­mance and the Grand Port Mar­itime De La Guade­lope for in­au­gur­al en­try in­to the com­pe­ti­tion.

Ques­tioned about the judg­ing cri­te­ria, Alexan­der said this in­clud­ed sub­mis­sion of coun­try re­ports briefly ad­vis­ing of car­go vol­umes, cruise sta­tis­tics, and par­tic­u­lar­ly cap­i­tal projects and de­vel­op­ments of in­ter­est, in a video pre­sen­ta­tion.

Al­so, he in­di­cat­ed that No­va­Port Cup sta­tis­tics for PATT were sub­mit­ted to the PMAC Sec­re­tari­at, with a com­pi­la­tion of da­ta.

Act­ing PATT CEO Robert Ram­sub­hag said the port has seen a 30 per cent in­crease in ves­sels be­ing ser­viced by the port.

“We are serv­ing a lot more in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping ves­sels, peo­ple are show­ing much more in­ter­est. We have in­vest­ed through the Gov­ern­ment in­to two new cranes for $83 mil­lion each, along with yard equip­ment. We ex­pect our per­for­mance for the award to be bet­ter than last year and we can even reach num­ber one in the re­gion,” Ram­sub­hag added.

Crit­i­cal achieve­ments

Alexan­der not­ed that over the six months to one-year pe­ri­od, the port re­placed the gal­va­nized sheet­ing on Shed #4 Roof for $1.9 mil­lion, re­paint­ing the ex­te­ri­or cladding of both Shed #4 and Shed #3 at a com­bined cost of $500,000.

In­fra­struc­ture up­grade to the wash­rooms at the Cruise Ship Com­plex, PoS for $350,000, and main­te­nance over­hauls of the hy­draulic sys­tem of the Fast Fer­ry Ramps at both Port of Port of Spain and Port of Scar­bor­ough were un­der­tak­en.

Pana­ma Canal shrink­ing

In May con­cerns were raised by in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping lines af­ter a se­vere drought around the Pana­ma Canal forced con­tain­er ves­sels to light­en their loads, which can lead to freight rates in­creas­ing once again.

Alexan­der said it was just a cou­ple of weeks ago he was made aware of this sit­u­a­tion.

“The en­gi­neer­ing is al­so very in­ter­est­ing as well, be­cause they are re­cy­cling the wa­ter in the locks, as wa­ter that used to flow from ocean to ocean is no longer hap­pen­ing, be­cause of cli­mate change. As a re­sult of that, some­times it caus­es a slow­down in the move­ment of ves­sels through the canal. But I am not aware that it is af­fect­ing the po­ten­tial move­ment of ves­sels to T&T. How­ev­er, we are pay­ing close at­ten­tion to this de­vel­op­ing is­sue,” Alexan­der men­tioned.