Kngstown, St. Vincent.
Prime Minister Ralf Gonslaves has announced that Caribbean aviation and transport ministers will meet in St Vincent tomorrow to discuss a wide range of outstanding matters including the possibility of establishing a single regional airline
Gonsalves, speaking at a news conference today, said that while his administration has no objection to the formation of a single airline to serve the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region, such initiatives in the past have not borne fruit.
“At the end of this month, we are hosting here a meeting on air transportation in CARICOM….As you know there are many issues outstanding and as you know I am always amused that the people who are supposed to be thinking about public policy don’t look beyond the headlines”.
He said five or six years ago, then prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning, dissolved BWIA, formed Caribbean Airlines (CAL) and paid off all their debts.
But he said in 2011, CAL made a loss of US$44 million “and last year they made a loss in the sum of close to US$84 million.
“That is plenty money in any language whatsoever and there is re-thinking of certain things and the call has been made by many persons for one Caribbean airline. “We have no problem with that,” he said, noting that the fine prints would need to be examined.
“I am very mindful before BWIA was dissolved, BWIA took decisions where they simply cut off a lot of flights without notice to Barbados, which affected us here in the Eastern Caribbean and I see on more than one occasion where they have acted not consistent with our own transportation needs.
“I am not going to leave the bone of LIAT for the shadow of something else. So I would like to see a complete revamping of air transportation in the region so that we can get all the relevant synergies,” he said.
Prime Minister Gonsalves has been critical of Port of Spain for providing a subsidy to CAL which he said goes against the provisions of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that governs CARICOM.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica are the major shareholders of the Antigua-based LIAT and Prime Minister Gonsalves said that upgrading the fleet would begin with the arrival of the first French-made ATR-72 aircraft by August.
Gonsalves told reporters that plans to develop the island’s international airport were proceedings well and he hoped by May “we would have been a little further.
“I have identified significant money as part of the US$80 million I require, but some sums which I should have received already…and which we are awaiting have held me back a little, but it seems as though we are on our way.”
Gonsalves, who is due in Venezuela to attend a meeting of the Bolivarian Alliance of the People’s of the Americas (ALBA) and PetroCaribe, said while he attended the inauguration of the new Venezuelan president, he held talks with Cuban President Raul Castro on the further assistance for the construction of the multi-million dollar international airport.
“They are supposed to send for us a technical review team and to see what other sets of personnel of a skilled type we may need to assist in the acceleration of the process. But I want to assure the Vincentian public that the airport would be completed and even if three or five months later, nobody is going to hang me for it,” he told reporters.
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