Over the last two weeks up to yes­ter­day, Gov­ern­ment paid ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$29 mil­lion to Aus­tralian ship-builders Austal and In­cat in down pay­ments and oth­er fees to­wards the pur­chase of the two pas­sen­ger fer­ries.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley de­tailed the pay­ments yes­ter­day dur­ing a state­ment to Par­lia­ment on the ac­qui­si­tion of the fer­ries from Aus­tralian ship­builders, as well as two Cape Class pa­trol boats for T&T’s Coast Guard.

In re­sponse to re­cent Op­po­si­tion calls for Aus­tralian scruti­ny of the pro­cure­ment process for the ves­sels, Row­ley gave a full chrono­log­i­cal break­down of how the ac­qui­si­tion arose, start­ing with dis­cus­sions with Aus­tralian of­fi­cials in 2017 and 2018, his Aus­tralian vis­it that year, pub­lic up­dates, in­spec­tion of the pa­trol ves­sels by T&T naval ex­perts and this month’s pay­ments.

“The pro­cure­ment process used by Gov­ern­ment in the present cir­cum­stances can with­stand all scruti­ny and is un­taint­ed,” he de­clared.

The Austal fer­ry costs US$73.5m and the In­cat ves­sel US$72.9m. Row­ley said as at Jan­u­ary 7, Nid­co had paid Austal US$8,148,000, with US$7,148,000 be­ing the ten per cent down pay­ment for the fast fer­ry plus a US$1 mil­lion sched­uled ac­cel­er­a­tion pay­ment.

Like­wise, as at Jan­u­ary 7, Nid­co paid In­cat US$15,595,400 with US$14,595,400 be­ing the 20 per cent down pay­ment for the fast fer­ry plus a US$1 mil­lion book­ing fee.

“On­ly (yes­ter­day) a fur­ther sum of US$5,361,000 has been paid to Austal for the or­der­ing of the en­gines for the fast fer­ries,”
he said.

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments with Aus­tralia’s EF­IC ex­port cred­it agency for the ves­sels. He said there are fur­ther sums which will be­come due un­der the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments go­ing for­ward un­til com­ple­tion of the ves­sels.

He said the ne­go­ti­a­tion team, head­ed by Nid­co chair­man Her­bert George, is work­ing on the is­sue. He al­so said dur­ing a June 24 to Ju­ly 1 vis­it to Aus­tralia, T&T De­fence Force head Rear Ad­mi­ral Hay­den Pritchard and En­gi­neer­ing Of­fi­cer Lieu­tenant Com­man­der Ra­jesh Boodoo as­sessed Austal’s Cape Class pa­trol boat to de­ter­mine its suit­abil­i­ty and found the ves­sel “would be quite ap­pro­pri­ate for the op­er­a­tion.”

The Austal fer­ry is a high-speed pas­sen­ger/car­go roll-on/roll-off cata­ma­ran with ca­pac­i­ty for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 930 pas­sen­gers, in­clu­sive of 132 VIP seats, 150 cars with ac­com­mo­da­tions for trucks and a pris­on­er hold­ing cell for up to ten per­sons. Ves­sel speed is 37.5 knots.

The In­cat fer­ry is a 100-me­tre high-speed pas­sen­ger/car­go roll-on/ roll-off cata­ma­ran with a ca­pac­i­ty for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 pas­sen­gers in­clu­sive of 224 VIP seats, 239 cars with ac­com­mo­da­tion for trucks and a pris­on­er hold­ing cell for up to ten per­sons. Ves­sel speed is 39.5 knots.

“As is ev­i­dent, at every step of the way, this Gov­ern­ment has been trans­par­ent in how it has con­duct­ed it­self. There have been sev­er­al lev­els of eval­u­a­tion and ne­go­ti­a­tions with In­cat and Austal. At every step, Gov­ern­ment has in­formed the pub­lic of its ac­tions and de­ci­sions, un­like what tran­spired be­tween 2010 and 2015. The then Gov­ern­ment didn’t in­form the pub­lic that it was procur­ing ves­sels for the Coast Guard from Damen. There was no trans­paren­cy,” Row­ley said.

“So to have the Op­po­si­tion ques­tion­ing the pro­cure­ment of the two or­dered fast fer­ries and the two Cape Class Pa­trol ves­sels from In­cat and Austal and to have them bring­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to dis­re­pute by writ­ing to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Aus­tralia mak­ing com­plete­ly un­found­ed and spu­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions is quite dif­fi­cult to swal­low know­ing ful­ly well how they con­duct­ed them­selves be­fore!”

He con­demned Op­po­si­tion at­tempts to “sul­ly” this coun­try’s im­age and name, their in­vi­ta­tion to the Aus­tralian Op­po­si­tion to op­pose the mat­ter and the ap­proach to Aus­tralia’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al “to em­broil the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go in a con­trived fab­ri­cat­ed scan­dal with­out a shred of in­for­ma­tion.”