Mottley: T&T exploring use of one of its ferries for intra-regional service

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has an­nounced that Trinidad and To­ba­go will play a key role in ad­vanc­ing a long-await­ed in­tra-re­gion­al fer­ry ser­vice, re­veal­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has agreed to ex­plore the use of one of this coun­try’s fer­ries as a proof of con­cept while longer-term pri­vate sec­tor arrange­ments are fi­nalised.

Ad­dress­ing the clos­ing me­dia con­fer­ence, Mot­t­ley said re­duc­ing the cost of in­tra-is­land car­go trans­porta­tion has be­come an ur­gent re­gion­al pri­or­i­ty as glob­al geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions con­tin­ue to dri­ve up the prices of oil, freight and oth­er es­sen­tial goods, con­tribut­ing to a high­er cost of liv­ing across the Caribbean.

“The ma­jor ini­tia­tive that we want to be able to do is to re­duce the cost of car­go for in­tra-is­land trade,” Mot­t­ley said.

She ex­plained that while the re­gion con­tin­ues to pur­sue a per­ma­nent pri­vate-sec­tor op­er­at­ed fer­ry ser­vice, the pro­cure­ment of suit­able ves­sels could take up to a year.

How­ev­er, Mot­t­ley dis­closed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has agreed to be­gin dis­cus­sions on de­ploy­ing one of T&T’s ex­ist­ing fer­ries to launch a pi­lot ser­vice.

‘”We are now about to en­ter dis­cus­sions, Prime Min­is­ter Fri­day from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad Bisses­sar, and my­self as lead on CSME, to see how best we can utilise one of the Trinidad ves­sels as a proof of con­cept while the pri­vate sec­tor pro­cures. And I’ve un­der­tak­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of work­ing with col­leagues to be able to get the treaty arrange­ments for mu­tu­al recog­ni­tion of li­cences, in­sur­ance, so that ve­hi­cles, car­go ve­hi­cles, can lit­er­al­ly go on and come off where pos­si­ble.”

She not­ed that the ini­tial proof-of-con­cept ser­vice is ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on the South­ern and East­ern Caribbean, while re­gion­al gov­ern­ments al­so as­sess whether up­grades to port in­fra­struc­ture or tem­po­rary ramp fa­cil­i­ties will be re­quired.

Mot­t­ley said the fer­ry ini­tia­tive forms part of a broad­er Cari­com strat­e­gy to ease in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures by low­er­ing freight costs, along­side ef­forts to re­duce en­er­gy costs and in­crease cit­i­zens’ dis­pos­able in­come.