ST GEORGE'S–Grena­da says it is will­ing to be a part­ner in the de­vel­op­ment and suc­cess of the re­gion­al air­line, Li­at, on­ly if the cash-strapped air­line shows it­self to be se­ri­ous and cost ef­fec­tive.Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Mitchell said he has made rec­om­men­da­tions on im­prov­ing the air­line to the just con­clud­ed sum­mit of lead­ers of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) in An­tigua this week.

"We're pre­pared to make sac­ri­fices but we will not be able to sup­port a busi­ness if it can­not demon­strate that it can get its act to­geth­er and pro­vide what we be­lieve is nec­es­sary; much cheap­er trans­port and much more ef­fi­cient trans­port to the OECS and the Caribbean re­gion as a whole," Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell said.

Li­at, which flies to 21 des­ti­na­tions in the Caribbean, is now in the process of re-fleet­ing its ag­ing planes es­ti­mat­ed at US$100 mil­lion. The air­line said that it is seek­ing to bor­row be­tween US$60 and US$70 mil­lion from the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB).The An­tigua-based air­line last De­cem­ber un­veiled a new busi­ness plan it said would help re­verse an EC$43 mil­lion loss in 2011 while pro­ject­ing a two per cent prof­it in 2013.

Li­at has al­so been com­plain­ing of the un­fair sub­sidy be­ing pro­vid­ed to the T&T-based Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) and is seek­ing a meet­ing with T&T's Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Biss­esar on the mat­ter.Mitchell, whose New Na­tion­al Par­ty (NNP) came to of­fice fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion in Feb­ru­ary, said he ac­cepts com­plaints from the gen­er­al pub­lic that re­gion­al gov­ern­ments were im­ple­ment­ing var­i­ous tax­es and forc­ing air­fares of Li­at to be ex­treme­ly high.

"We can­not tax our­selves out of a se­ri­ous is­sue of af­ford­able trans­port," Mitchell said, adding "we can drop the cost...and re­duce tax­es, what we're go­ing to find out is that LI­AT may be a much more suc­cess­ful en­ter­prise."More peo­ple will trav­el, the gov­ern­ments are go­ing to get much more rev­enue by mul­ti­ply­ing the amount of peo­ple that will be trav­el­ling," he added.

CMC