Who will bear the cost of bring­ing the Caribbean clos­er to­geth­er?

This seemed to be the ques­tion which emerged as once again Cari­com lead­ers spoke of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice be­ing es­tab­lished at the 45th Cari­com Reg­u­lar Meet­ing and 50th An­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion in Port of Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go ear­li­er this week.

The top­ic was reignit­ed on Mon­day when Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali con­firmed that re­gion­al trav­el re­mained an is­sue high on the agen­da.

“Trans­porta­tion re­mains one of the most crit­i­cal is­sues of the re­gion. That is why it con­tin­ues to be on the agen­da. But we have been mak­ing some progress. At least now there are a num­ber of in­ter­est­ed par­ties who have ex­pressed in­ter­est in be­ing part of the so­lu­tion. So I think we are mov­ing now from that con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion stage to a stronger po­si­tion of find­ing a so­lu­tion,” said Ali, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at Femmes Du Chalet, for­mer­ly known as the Break­fast Shed at the Port of Spain wa­ter­front.

“We would like it to hap­pen yes­ter­day. That is why it is on the agen­da. I think that the up­date we get at this meet­ing would al­low us to see how fast we can move and I think what we need to do now is to con­cre­tise who the dif­fer­ent part­ners are, where we have in­ter­est and then pur­sue those part­ners,” said Ali.

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Ralph Gon­salves ad­mit­ted the cur­rent state of in­ter-re­gion­al trav­el was lack­ing and con­firmed that his coun­try was hope­ful that talks around a pos­si­ble re­gion­al fer­ry would soon be brought to re­al­i­ty.

“The dis­cus­sion has been go­ing on a long, long time. The is­sue is to have a pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ty with suf­fi­cient re­sources, and pre­pared to go for the long haul, with sup­port from gov­ern­ments to do this. Be­cause there’s a need, there’s a mar­ket­place, but we have had pri­vate sec­tor en­ti­ties come for­ward in re­la­tion to this mat­ter,” he said.

The em­pha­sis that pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment was need­ed was stressed on Tues­day by T&T Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who point­ed out that run­ning such a ser­vice was go­ing to be cost­ly, as he not­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice cost the gov­ern­ment be­tween $200 and $240 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in sub­si­dies.

“Most of it is fu­el. Once you ac­quire the fer­ry, like you men­tion the air­line and Trinidad hav­ing oil, but hav­ing oil or gas doesn’t put cheap fu­el in­to a plane,” said Dr Row­ley, “These things are priced in a par­tic­u­lar way. Fu­el is avail­able but you have to pay for it. We don’t get fu­el from Shell or BP for free. We have to pay for it.”

He said the added di­men­sion of trav­el up the is­land chain would prove even more cost­ly and it was un­like­ly a gov­ern­ment could sub­sidise such an en­deav­our.

“I don’t see a sub­sidy that would be re­quired for a fast fer­ry for us and up the is­lands. I don’t see it on the cards. The re­sources are not there,” said Row­ley who even point­ed out there were talks be­tween this coun­try and Bar­ba­dos con­cern­ing a sea­plane ser­vice, but even this would re­quire pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment.

“I don’t know that our busi­ness hous­es are keen to do that. We don’t have the large pool of en­tre­pre­neurs with deep pock­ets for whom that is some­thing they see as an op­por­tu­ni­ty. But if that was there, it’s cheap­er than op­er­at­ing a fast fer­ry, a boat fer­ry,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

“Who is go­ing to in­vest and for whom is this a pri­or­i­ty?” he asked.

But on the top­ic of re­gion­al flights, St Vin­cent Prime Min­is­ter Gon­salves ap­plaud­ed the fact that Caribbean Air­lines had an­nounced in­creased flights around the re­gion. He said, though, there is still the need for a sec­ond re­gion­al air­line to op­er­ate.

“There are im­por­tant ques­tions to de­cide. Are you go­ing to start a new air­line or are you go­ing to have Li­at 2020 or what­ev­er the case might be? So there are some de­ci­sions to be made and not so much from the heads but the gov­ern­ments that want to par­tic­i­pate in this ex­er­cise,” said Prime Min­is­ter Gon­salves.

An­oth­er re-emerg­ing top­ic at the meet­ing was food se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, un­like re­gion­al trav­el, the lead­ers could point to signs of progress.

A tar­get had in­deed been set for food se­cu­ri­ty be­fore the lead­ers con­verged in T&T’s cap­i­tal, via the 25 per cent by 2025 re­duc­tion in the re­gion­al food bill ini­tia­tive com­mit­ted to by Cari­com last year.

Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali posit­ed a new av­enue the re­gion could ex­plore in ad­dress­ing that goal as he not­ed that Guyana was unique­ly po­si­tioned to push this dri­ve from both a ge­o­graph­i­cal and eco­nom­ic stand­point.

“I think if we work in a more col­lab­o­ra­tive way, there are a num­ber of busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties that can be de­vel­oped that Guyana can be a bridge for. For ex­am­ple, north­ern Brazil and the role it can play in food se­cu­ri­ty to bring more raw ma­te­ri­als in terms of food pro­duc­tion to the val­ue-added chain and re-en­gi­neer­ing the whole food sup­ply and lo­gis­tics chain through­out the re­gion,” said Ali on Mon­day.

He point­ed out that since Cari­com launched this dri­ve, there had been much pos­i­tive im­pe­tus in the Agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

“We have been able to build tremen­dous in­ter­est from the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors and we have seen a lot of pri­vate re­la­tion­ships be­ing built and a lot of co-in­vest­ment pro­pos­als com­ing for­ward. And from the gov­ern­ment side, the pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of food pro­duc­tion and agri­cul­ture has def­i­nite­ly ig­nit­ed new in­ter­est and new en­er­gy in agri­cul­ture and food pro­duc­tion,” he said.

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Ralph Gon­salves sim­i­lar­ly hailed Guyana’s role in pro­gress­ing the re­duc­tion of the re­gion’s food bill but ad­mit­ted that there had been in­con­sis­tent lev­els of ef­fort across the re­gion.

“The Pres­i­dent of Guyana is do­ing a lot of good work on the ini­tia­tive, to re­duce food im­ports by 25 per cent by 2025. I don’t know if we’re go­ing to get to it. But at least you have to set your­self tar­gets and we are see­ing some im­pact al­ready. It is just an­oth­er two years to 2025. The progress is un­even, but it’s good that we’re mak­ing progress,” he said.

Prime Min­is­ter Gon­salves how­ev­er was heart­ened that the dri­ve had brought a re­al­i­sa­tion that the tra­di­tion­al eco­nom­ic po­si­tions were no longer the sta­tus quo. He was, as a re­sult, grate­ful that new faces, ideas and ap­proach­es were be­ing con­sid­ered.

“A lot of coun­tries re­alise that the days of the colo­nial pref­er­ences for com­modi­ties, whether it’s sug­ar or ba­nanas, those days are gone. So you’ll have to do things which are com­pet­i­tive. And we’re see­ing that some younger farm­ers are get­ting in­volved,” said Gon­salves.

He ac­knowl­edged that new ap­proach­es al­so had to be ac­cept­ed con­cern­ing tourism as he ex­plained that St Vin­cent had be­gun work to ex­pand on its al­ready im­pres­sive tourism port­fo­lio as it ex­pect­ed a new San­dals re­sort and a Mar­riott to be con­struct­ed soon while oth­er in­vestors from Cana­da and the Unit­ed States had shown in­ter­est in de­vel­op­ing ho­tels in the Caribbean.

“I would say by the end of 2026 we will have an ad­di­tion­al 1,000 rooms of high qual­i­ty. So it’s be­ing built out. What we’re do­ing in St Vin­cent and Grenadines is that we are build­ing. We are on the quest to build a mod­ern com­pet­i­tive, many-sided post-colo­nial econ­o­my. Which is at once na­tion­al, re­gion­al and glob­al with all those words preg­nant with re­al mean­ing.”

Gon­salves stressed that while tourism it­self was a mon­ey-mak­ing in­dus­try, it al­so fed oth­er as­pects of the lo­cal econ­o­my which need­ed stim­u­la­tion and de­vel­op­ment.

“In tourism, you have to deal with fish­eries we made we have a big plus in that be­cause we bring tourists you have to give them fish to eat.

“You have to give them a lot of fruit and grow pro­vi­sion and veg­eta­bles so that the farm­ers could make a dol­lar.

“And be­cause we are com­ing a lit­tle late to what you may call mass tourism, we have we have a high lev­el of tourism in the Grenadines for in­stance, Mus­tique I don’t know if you know this, but the is­land of Mus­tique, through the Mus­tique com­pa­ny they con­tribute gross to the econ­o­my of St. Vin­cent Grenadines an­nu­al­ly US$150 mil­lion. It’s a big num­ber,” he said.

“So we have fair­ly good high-end tourism and we have good yacht­ing tourism, and yacht­ing tourism makes a fair amount of mon­ey. But we have the cruise (ships) I know. But we are go­ing to do and we’re do­ing more mass tourism.”