Kay-Marie Fletch­er & Pe­ter christo­pher

Se­nior Re­porters

Al­though sev­er­al heads of gov­ern­ment at this week’s 45th Cari­com meet­ing have called for the es­tab­lish­ment of a re­gion­al fast fer­ry ser­vice, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said it is not some­thing that can be eas­i­ly af­ford­ed.

In fact, Row­ley is op­posed to a fast fer­ry al­to­geth­er. In­stead, he sug­gest­ed Cari­com in­vests in sin­gle hull, slow­er ves­sels.

In an ex­clu­sive sit-down with Caribbean jour­nal­ist Ju­lian Rogers at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter which was made avail­able to Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, Row­ley said two to four ves­sels would be suf­fi­cient.

“I see peo­ple talk­ing about a fast fer­ry ser­vice, they don’t know what they are talk­ing about. We op­er­ate a fast fer­ry be­tween Port-of-Spain and Scar­bor­ough, that’s 80 miles. It costs us a for­tune and is heav­i­ly sub­sidised. I don’t see it on the cards be­cause the re­sources are not there.

“If we can get two to four ves­sels that are pur­pose-based built for car­go and pas­sen­gers, like the Fed­er­al Maple and the Fed­er­al Palm were built, and just op­er­ate them. They have to be sin­gle hull, slow­er ves­sels, not fast fer­ries,” he said.

He said talks are tak­ing place be­tween Cari­com and Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries that are in a po­si­tion to fund those types of ves­sels.

Row­ley said it costs Gov­ern­ment ap­prox­i­mate­ly $200 mil­lion to $240 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to sub­sidise the fast fer­ry ser­vice be­tween Port-of-Spain and Scar­bor­ough.

On Mon­day, Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that dis­cus­sions about the ser­vice were on the agen­da for the 45th Cari­com Reg­u­lar Meet­ing.

“Trans­porta­tion re­mains one of the most crit­i­cal is­sues of the re­gion. That is why it con­tin­ues to be on the agen­da but we have been mak­ing some progress. At least now there are a num­ber of in­ter­est­ed par­ties who would have ex­pressed in­ter­est in be­ing part of the so­lu­tion, so I think we are mov­ing now from that con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion stage to a stronger po­si­tion of find­ing a so­lu­tion,” Ali said in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at Femmes Du Chalet, bet­ter known as the Break­fast Shed, at the Port-of-Spain wa­ter­front.

“We would like it to hap­pen yes­ter­day, that is why it is on the agen­da. I think that this up­date that we get at this meet­ing would al­low us to see how fast we can move and I think what we need to do now is to con­cre­tise who the dif­fer­ent part­ners are where we have in­ter­est and then pur­sue those part­ners,” said Ali.

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Ralph Gon­salves said his coun­try was very in­ter­est­ed in hav­ing such an op­tion avail­able.

“We’re very in­ter­est­ed in that. The dis­cus­sion has been go­ing on a long, long time. The ques­tion is this—to have a pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ty with suf­fi­cien­cy of re­sources and pre­pared to go for the long haul, with sup­port from gov­ern­ments to do this be­cause there’s a need, there’s a mar­ket­place, but we have had pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties come for­ward in re­la­tion,” he said in an in­ter­view at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

Gon­salves not­ed that there WAs need for im­prove­ment in flight op­tions across the Caribbean and ac­knowl­edged that Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) had an­nounced plans to in­crease its flights across the re­gion.

“In re­la­tion to air trans­porta­tion, that has been rough since COVID but we have seen some ten­ta­tive steps. CAL is in­creas­ing the num­ber of air­craft, the ATRs, the tur­bo props, are do­ing more runs. They’re go­ing to put on more planes in the East­ern Caribbean from Ju­ly 24. They’re ramp­ing up,” he said.

On Sat­ur­day, the air­line con­firmed its ex­pan­sion in­to the East­ern Caribbean with new non-stop ser­vices be­tween Bar­ba­dos and St Vin­cent, as well as St Lu­cia. CAL an­nounced in­creased ca­pac­i­ty to Do­mini­ca and Grena­da, while the Bar­ba­dos to St Vin­cent route has been in­creased to sev­en week­ly ser­vices, in ad­di­tion to four new week­ly flights be­tween Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia with di­rect St Lu­cia to St Vin­cent re­turn flights op­er­at­ing on Thurs­days.

Gon­salves said there was need for an­oth­er Caribbean car­ri­er to ser­vice those is­lands and dis­cus­sions are un­der­way.