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Friday, February 28, 2025

US$270M PPP to manage POS port's cargo handling

by

GEISHA KOWLESSAR-ALONZO
238 days ago
20240705
Port of Port-of-Spain

Port of Port-of-Spain

The In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) and the Glob­al In­fra­struc­ture Fa­cil­i­ty (GIF) are sup­port­ing T&T in the de­vel­op­ment of a US$270 mil­lion pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship that will im­prove car­go ser­vices at the port of Port-of-Spain, boost­ing trade and en­hanc­ing the coun­try’s com­pet­i­tive­ness.

A state­ment from the IDB said, “The PPP is ex­pect­ed to in­vest up to US$270 mil­lion, aim­ing to boost port pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by more than 50 per cent.

“The new pri­vate op­er­a­tor will man­age all the port’s car­go-han­dling ac­tiv­i­ties, rang­ing from gen­er­al car­go op­er­a­tions and ter­mi­nal han­dling to weigh­ing and reefer ser­vices.”

It not­ed the T&T’s Port Au­thor­i­ty has is­sued a pub­lic no­tice to com­pa­nies in­ter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the project ten­der, adding that the project has gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est from pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pants, who have un­til Ju­ly 15 to reg­is­ter.

“This is an am­bi­tious project that aims to sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost the Port’s ef­fi­cien­cy and ca­pac­i­ty. The part­ner­ship with the Gov­ern­ment, the IDB and GIF has been in­stru­men­tal in struc­tur­ing this op­por­tu­ni­ty, which is re­lat­ed to IDB’s com­mit­ment to max­imise the im­pact of our work in T&T, fo­cus­ing on re­silient and sus­tain­able in­fra­struc­ture that en­hances the coun­try’s com­pet­i­tive­ness, trade, and the qual­i­ty of life of its peo­ple,” said Ca­ri­na Cock­burn, IDB coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive in T&T.

The project tar­gets to in­crease the ef­fec­tive ca­pac­i­ty of the port from 340,000 TEUs (twen­ty-foot equiv­a­lent unit) to 620,000 TEUs in the short term and up to 1,100,000 TEUs in the long term.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the project in­cludes op­ti­mis­ing ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture in the short term to en­hance com­pet­i­tive­ness.

The state­ment added that the project is the first PPP struc­tur­ing in the Caribbean to re­ceive sup­port from both the IDB and the GIF.

The GIF is a glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form that in­te­grates ef­forts to boost pri­vate in­vest­ment in sus­tain­able, qual­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture projects in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries and emerg­ing mar­kets.

Es­tab­lished in 1959, the IDB is a lead­ing source of long-term fi­nanc­ing for eco­nom­ic, so­cial, and in­sti­tu­tion­al de­vel­op­ment in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The port of Port-of-Spain’s car­go-han­dling ser­vices were im­pact­ed on Feb­ru­ary 22, 2024, as “due to ab­sen­teeism by equip­ment op­er­a­tors, all car­go op­er­a­tions were dis­rupt­ed,” ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT) on Feb­ru­ary 22.

The ab­sen­teeism of the equip­ment op­er­a­tors was part­ly linked to a dis­pute over wages at the port of Port-of-Spain.

In Feb­ru­ary, af­ter the labour dis­rup­tion, PATT chair­man Lyle Alexan­der said be­fore his board came in­to of­fice in 2018, there was a dis­cus­sion be­tween the pre­vi­ous board and the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Union, which rep­re­sents work­ers on the port. That dis­cus­sion in­clud­ed the de­vel­op­ment of some new work­ing prac­tices and a pos­si­ble set­tle­ment of a 12 per cent wage hike.


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