SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West says a Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee has made rec­om­men­da­tions to the Par­lia­ment on the op­tions to pri­va­tise the Port of Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing at a Min­istry of Works and Trans­port press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, West said the Gov­ern­ment will re­veal its de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the port in about a month’s time.

“We pre­pared a re­port with our rec­om­men­da­tions which have been sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net. Cab­i­net is look­ing at those rec­om­men­da­tions to de­ter­mine what is the best op­tion, the ob­jec­tive be­ing al­ways to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of the port so that busi­ness can op­er­ate bet­ter, eas­i­er, more cheap­ly and more ef­fec­tive­ly - that is the op­er­a­tion,” West said.

“At no time did the Gov­ern­ment in­di­cate or in­tend to dis­pose of the land on which the port sits.”

West’s com­ments come four days af­ter Fish­er­man and Friends of the Sea’s Gary Aboud post­ed a video on so­cial me­dia claim­ing the land the port sits on was be­ing put up for sale.

Yes­ter­day, West chalked Aboud’s state­ments up to mis­in­for­ma­tion.

In ear­ly No­vem­ber 2020, West said the com­mit­tee com­prised four min­is­ters - her­self, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. It al­so in­clud­ed of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Works, Port Au­thor­i­ty, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union, Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion and the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce. At that time, West said the com­mit­tee had met sev­er­al times and promised it would sub­mit a re­port to Par­lia­ment in two weeks’ time.

Yes­ter­day, she said the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee, the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee, looked at the re­port last Mon­day.

“They want­ed us to do some fur­ther work and build out what we an­tic­i­pate will be an RFP (Re­quest for Pro­pos­al) is­sued to the pub­lic, so they gave us a month to do that but we are try­ing to come back to them be­fore the dead­line ex­pires. With­in the next month or so, we should have made a de­ci­sion and we will come back to the pub­lic and in­di­cate where we are in terms of that process.”

In his 2020/2021 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert an­nounced Gov­ern­ment’s plan to pri­va­tise the port, say­ing pub­lic ports around the world have been mov­ing away from the ‘ser­vice’ port mod­el’ and to the land­lord mod­el. He said the Gov­ern­ment’s adop­tion of this mod­el will al­low it to re­tain reg­u­la­to­ry and as­set man­age­ment func­tions with man­age­r­i­al, op­er­a­tional and fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties placed on a pri­vate in­vestor.