PM says no move to scrap CAL subsidy entirely

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­firmed that a pro­pos­al to in­tro­duce two dai­ly un­sub­sidised Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flights on the do­mes­tic air­bridge is un­der re­view by the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, but has not yet reached Cab­i­net.

And while she un­der­scored that Guardian Me­dia’s re­port­ing yes­ter­day on the mat­ter was ac­cu­rate, she stressed that there has been no dis­cus­sion about re­mov­ing the sub­sidy en­tire­ly.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day re­port­ed that Trade Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj had said Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing adding the ex­tra morn­ing and evening peak time flights with­out sub­sidy, with fares rang­ing from $960 to $1,000, a price he de­scribed as “noth­ing” to pay. Cur­rent­ly, the sub­sidised cost is $400.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Guardian Me­dia’s re­port was ac­cu­rate, but clar­i­fied that the pro­pos­al re­mains at the fea­si­bil­i­ty stage.

“Min­is­ter Ma­haraj’s min­istry is look­ing at the fea­si­bil­i­ty of it and, as Dr Mooni­lal right­ly said, it has to be brought to Cab­i­net,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Prime Min­is­ter added that To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine will “ob­vi­ous­ly” be kept in­formed through­out the process lead­ing up to Cab­i­net con­sid­er­a­tion.

But while En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day de­scribed the sto­ry’s head­line as “mis­lead­ing, in­cor­rect and wrong,” the Prime Min­is­ter does not share that view.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia, “To be fair, I think the me­dia re­port­ed the sto­ry ac­cu­rate­ly, but peo­ple ap­peared to main­ly have read the head­lines and ig­nored the ac­tu­al sto­ry. And then some peo­ple de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­in­ter­pret­ed the sto­ry. Every­thing is ex­plained in the sto­ries on both news­pa­pers as I saw it to­day and, on the news, last night.”

Asked by Guardian Me­dia if this was a pre­cur­sor to re­mov­ing the sub­sidy en­tire­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter replied, “I don’t re­call any­one say­ing the sub­sidy is be­ing re­moved.”

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter point­ed to what she de­scribed as a “flip-flop” by Regi­nald McLean, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA).

Yes­ter­day, the TH­TA called for ur­gent con­sul­ta­tion on pro­posed changes to the do­mes­tic air­bridge, warn­ing that key stake­hold­ers are be­ing left out of de­ci­sions im­pact­ing To­ba­go’s econ­o­my.

In a state­ment, the TH­TA re­ject­ed high­er-priced peak flights, say­ing they would “re­strict ac­cess for es­sen­tial trav­el” with­out mean­ing­ful­ly re­duc­ing sub­si­dies. The as­so­ci­a­tion in­stead urged con­sid­er­a­tion of yield-based pric­ing, open­ing routes to oth­er air­lines, and time­ly sub­sidy pay­ments. It stressed that the air­bridge re­mains a crit­i­cal na­tion­al ser­vice and called for im­me­di­ate en­gage­ment to en­sure bal­anced, prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter point­ed Guardian Me­dia to a May 2025 news­pa­per ar­ti­cle, where McLean said sub­si­dies should be re­moved from most CAL flights on the do­mes­tic route to fa­cil­i­tate greater ef­fi­cien­cy on the air­bridge.

Guardian Me­dia asked McLean for a re­sponse. He clar­i­fied that sub­sidised flights should be re­tained for na­tion­als and ap­plied on­ly in spe­cial cir­cum­stances.

“If you are a res­i­dent with proof of your cit­i­zen­ship (prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion), or you have your work per­mits, or your res­i­den­cy pa­per­work, then if the sub­si­dies are in place, you should get sub­sidised air­fare on the air­bridge, and al­so on the seabridge. Oth­er than that, it should be non-sub­sidised,” he said.

McLean added, “Di­a­logue with all con­cerned needs to hap­pen to come up with a work­able com­pro­mise to the prob­lems that ex­ist on the air­bridge, and for that mat­ter, the seabridge as well.”