An­oth­er ma­jor tourism project is set for To­ba­go, as Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to go ahead with plans to de­vel­op a ma­ri­na at Ca­noe Bay through a De­sign-Build and Fi­nance (DBF) arrange­ment.

This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stu­art Young at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Mag­dale­na Grande Re­sort in To­ba­go.

He said Cab­i­net took a de­ci­sion, fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tion with To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles yes­ter­day, to go ahead with a pro­pos­al to build a ma­ri­na. Young said one com­pa­ny was suc­cess­ful in se­cur­ing the bid af­ter the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) in­vit­ed pro­pos­als for the project.

“NID­CO re­ceived two pro­pos­als... and Cab­i­net ap­proved an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee chaired by Mr George Bovell III ... and David Wong and Louis Leslie from To­ba­go.”

He said Jan De Nul, a Bel­gium Com­pa­ny, won the bid af­ter scor­ing 82 per cent on the weight­ed score, while the To­ba­go com­pa­ny Ma­rine Re­sorts scored 41.75 per cent. The com­pa­ny was award­ed the con­tract for the dredg­ing and recla­ma­tion of the sec­ond Palm Is­land in Dubai in 2002.

Asked whether Gov­ern­ment can af­ford to en­gage in an­oth­er large-scale project, as it was al­ready set to spend bil­lions on the San­dals ho­tel de­vel­op­ment, Stu­art stressed that in a DBF arrange­ment the pri­vate sec­tor fi­nances the project.

“What we fore­see, there is some sort of lease arrange­ment or it may very well be a PPP (pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship) where they (the pri­vate com­pa­ny) will run the ma­ri­na.”

How­ev­er, he did not rule out the THA own­ing and op­er­at­ing the fa­cil­i­ty. “They (the THA) may very well say they want to own it un­der the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Act,” Young said.