Colm: Wet lease of LIAT planes will save up to $10m

Finance Minister Colm Imbert
Finance Minister Colm Imbert

SOME $5 to $10 million will be saved in costs by the Government’s wet lease of LIAT aircraft for the Tobago airbridge in the absence of ferries servicing the seabridge, Finance Minister Colm Imbert told yesterday’s post-Cabinet media briefing at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s.

He expected the $4 million wet lease cost to be exactly matched by revenues from aircraft ticket sales, while the ferries’ dry docking will save $2.5 million per week (totalling an estimated $5 to $10 million.)

Otherwise, Imbert advised reporters who may be trying to track the position of new ferry, Galleons Passage, to not rely on free, amateur sites online which provide ship positions which are in fact two days out of date. He advised reporters to use paid subscription sites, saying a free site has said the vessel is now leaving China when in fact it was yesterday validly reported as being 40 per cent of the way from Japan to Hawaii, the latter where it will arrive within eight days. Saying the ferry is following a course approved by Lloyd’s Registry, he said there are no reports of any problems and at 11.6 knots it proceeding “exceedingly well.”

Imbert said Cabinet yesterday approved the procurement phase for construction of a “long overdue” new terminal at the ANR Robinson Airport in Tobago to accommodate international flights and wide-bodied aircraft. The $500 million facility will be completed by 2020, with construction to begin by 2018 year-end, under a BOLT arrangement.

Attorney General (AG) Faris Al-Rawi says that in Tobago, land registration has in the past been “a disaster.” He said Tobago will undergo a land demarcation exercise funded by a US$8 million Inter American Development Bank (IDB) loan, with a $100 million exercise likewise due for Trinidad. He was optimistic that current land title reform bills will combat the use of bogus deeds in obtaining bail at law courts.

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