Locals get Govt okay for Invaders Bay

 

He said files on the issue at the Planning Ministry dated back to at least 2005 when it first arose under the PNM. At that time, he said, a decision was taken to request proposals but that was not executed. Tewarie said the ministry which he now heads had received proposals for development of parts of the bay. He said 31 criteria were set out for selection and on the basis of ten proposals received three were recommended for Cabinet’s consideration. Cabinet agreed to consider the three and referred the matter to a multi-ministerial and institutional committee headed by Dax Driver (chairman, Economic Development Board). He said the team hired an independent firm to do due diligence scrutiny of the proposals. On the basis of the report, he said, they recommended that two investors warranted negotiations.  He said Cabinet had now agreed to accept the recommendation of the Driver team’s which was established to formalise with selected developers, the terms and conditions for commercial lease of the Invaders Bay development projects.

 

 

Tewarie said a major criterion in the exercise was the extent of risk to Government in those investments which were meant to be private sector investments. He said negotiations with the two companies represented a low risk proposal for Government.

He said negotiations would start with IBML to determine how the Cruise Ship Complex in Port-of-Spain could be included in the overall development of Invaders Bay and negotiations would include discussion of possible public-private arrangements with Government. He said Cabinet also recommended that negotiations should begin with DCDL to determine that company’s interest in leasing a smaller core area of the bay to undertake DCDL’s planned project, titled The Streets of the World.

Since only some of the bay will be subject to negotiations with the two companies, Tewarie said a lot of it was still open for commercialisation and Cabinet agreed that be made available for development, via future issue of a further request for proposals.