Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie has agreed to meet with three busi­ness groups who have ex­pressed ma­jor con­cerns over the port ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion study on which plans for con­struc­tion of a US$500 mil­lion trans­ship­ment port at La Brea are based.

The joint group­ing of stake­hold­er busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions–the Ship­ping As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT), T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA)–asked for the meet­ing to dis­cuss con­cerns they had ex­pressed in a let­ter to Tewarie.In a brief me­dia re­lease, the joint group­ing con­firmed that the meet­ing will take place and ex­pressed "every con­fi­dence that this con­sul­ta­tive meet­ing would re­sult in a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the con­cerns ex­pressed."

De­tails of the meet­ing date, venue and spe­cif­ic is­sues to be dis­cussed were not re­vealed. How­ev­er, a few weeks ago the SATT is­sued a state­ment warn­ing that con­struc­tion of an­oth­er con­tainer­ised port could neg­a­tive af­fect the growth and po­ten­tial of the coun­try's ex­ist­ing ports at Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas.The group said trans­ship­ment in the re­gion was al­ready ul­tra-com­pet­i­tive and said there were al­ready se­ri­ous con­cerns about im­pend­ing port over­ca­pac­i­ty re­gion­al­ly due to the var­i­ous plans for port ex­pan­sions.

The SATT state­ment con­tin­ued: "Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the com­pe­ti­tion for the rel­a­tive­ly small amounts of lo­cal and trans­ship­ment re­gion­al car­go could ul­ti­mate­ly af­fect the vi­a­bil­i­ty of one or more ports. In­vest­ments may be bet­ter spent on ex­pand­ing ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture and fa­cil­i­ties thus re­duc­ing de­vel­op­ment costs and al­so re­duc­ing op­er­a­tional re­source re­quire­ments to the coun­try, and ex­ploit­ing economies of scale."

The group rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment hold con­sul­ta­tions with ma­jor stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try and a do "sig­nif­i­cant fea­si­bil­i­ty study" be­fore em­bark­ing on the project.Gov­ern­ment has al­ready en­gaged Chi­na Har­bor En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (CHEC), a sub­sidiary of Chi­na Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd (CC­CC), to do a fea­si­bil­i­ty study on es­tab­lish­ment of the new trans­ship­ment port with dry dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties at La Brea.

The port ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion study which in­spired plans for the pro­posed fa­cil­i­ty was com­mis­sioned by the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board of the Plan­ning Min­istry and fund­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB). The study was con­duct­ed be­tween De­cem­ber and March.Tewarie re­cent­ly an­nounced that Cab­i­net had ap­proved the rec­om­men­da­tion for con­struc­tion of the port. He said the project will cre­ate hun­dreds of jobs for res­i­dents in the area.

The La Brea port will fo­cus on ship re­pairs and trans­ship­ment of goods and will be a pub­lic/pri­vate ini­tia­tive.Tewarie said the port ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion study showed that the port in Port-of-Spain was the "least com­pet­i­tive and least pro­duc­tive" of the coun­try's ex­ist­ing ports and while Point Lisas was sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter, it was "not up to the lev­el of glob­al ef­fi­cien­cies."