While it's a pity that no com­pa­ny from Trinidad and To­ba­go could pro­vide a bid for the pro­posed in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Trans­port De­vant Ma­haraj on Thurs­day, there's no doubt that the planned ex­pan­sion of trans­port op­tions and con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween the is­lands of the East­ern Caribbean is an ex­cel­lent idea and a long over­due one. Fast Caribbean Ltd, a con­sor­tium based in Bar­ba­dos, was the com­pa­ny an­nounced as the one se­lect­ed for the US$20 mil­lion project which it will op­er­ate with the char­ter, from Mon­trose Glob­al and IN­CATT, of a 112-me­tre cata­ma­ran ca­pa­ble of fer­ry­ing pas­sen­gers and goods. The pro­pos­al from Fast Caribbean promised to move 100,000 seats per year with ser­vice to Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St Lu­cia and Bar­ba­dos from a home base in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

While the com­pa­ny will be run by the Bar­ba­dos-based com­pa­ny, the Trans­port Min­is­ter promised that lo­cal in­vestors will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to buy shares in the busi­ness. The idea of a fast fer­ry ser­vice be­tween these is­lands is a throw­back to ear­li­er con­nec­tions be­tween the is­lands which saw a thriv­ing in­ter-is­land trade be­tween these Caribbean na­tions and a cer­tain flu­id­i­ty of move­ment of the peo­ples of the East­ern end of the re­gion. The pro­posed tick­et price is quite at­trac­tive, and the ship is fa­mil­iar, be­ing quite sim­i­lar to the ves­sel that's cur­rent­ly be­ing used on the fer­ry ser­vice be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. A tick­et of be­tween US$25 and $35 for a fer­ry that leaves Trinidad and To­ba­go at 6:00 am, docks at all its des­ti­na­tions and re­turns at 6 pm is an am­bi­tious un­der­tak­ing and it's one that's ground­break­ing enough to cre­ate new busi­ness projects and plan­ning that would lever­age its ex­is­tence. Caribbean Air­lines, by way of com­par­i­son, re­cent­ly slashed its tick­et price to St Lu­cia to US$92.

The suc­cess of the pri­vate sec­tor project is like­ly to de­pend on the kind of con­ces­sions that the Gov­ern­ment of­fers to launch the project. Still to be dis­cussed are mat­ters of sup­port, which in­clude the rate at which fu­el will be pro­vid­ed, the fa­cil­i­ties that will need to be of­fered at the port and oth­er con­ces­sions on du­ties and tar­iffs that would, log­i­cal­ly, be part of the in­cen­tives to en­cour­age the project and off­set start­up costs. As a pri­vate en­ter­prise, how­ev­er, such ne­go­ti­a­tions must have a clear win­dow set for the grand­fa­ther­ing of the project, with the Gov­ern­ment of­fer­ing every rea­son­able en­cour­age­ment dur­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of what's like­ly to be a game-chang­ing trans­porta­tion for this part of the Caribbean arch­i­pel­ago. While Trade Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz point­ed out that the fer­ry ser­vice would ex­pand op­por­tu­ni­ties for trade be­tween the is­lands, it seems clear that the ini­tia­tive opens pos­si­bil­i­ties be­tween these five Caribbean na­tions that this coun­try should be ready to de­vel­op and ex­ploit.

Along with the busi­ness con­ces­sions, the Gov­ern­ment would be well ad­vised to open mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial dis­cus­sions with the des­ti­na­tion coun­tries that would lu­bri­cate the move­ment of goods, ser­vices and work­ers be­tween the is­lands. If ever there were a prompt for the kind of open bor­ders think­ing that made the move­ment of peo­ple and ser­vices with­in the Caribbean so suc­cess­ful dur­ing the 2007 Crick­et World Cup, this project is it. Spared of the need for con­sen­sus be­tween all Cari­com na­tions, Trinidad and To­ba­go has an op­por­tu­ni­ty with this in­ter-is­land fer­ry project to craft a mod­el of in­ter-is­land co­op­er­a­tion for tourism, busi­ness, hu­man re­source and trade har­mon­i­sa­tion be­tween this coun­try and the four coun­tries that will sud­den­ly be­come more ac­ces­si­ble des­ti­na­tions. In plan­ning its sup­port of this pri­vate sec­tor en­ter­prise, the Gov­ern­ment must be clear about the out­comes it hopes to craft from this deep­en­ing of the re­la­tion­ship with our clos­est Caribbean neigh­bours.