An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

While the yacht­ing in­dus­try is be­ing pushed as a for­eign ex­change earn­er for the coun­try by the Gov­ern­ment, the process for yachts to en­ter the coun­try is a te­dious and must be made eas­i­er.

That’s ac­cord­ing to agency head of the Yacht and Concierge Ser­vices An­nette Bernard-Cal­len­der, who told Busi­ness Guardian on Fri­day that TT is the on­ly Caribbean yacht­ing des­ti­na­tion that still us­es phys­i­cal forms for ar­rival and de­par­ture clear­ances.

She said dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of this process will act as a pull fac­tor for stan­dard and lux­u­ry yacht vis­i­tors, who cur­rent­ly pre­fer to vis­it oth­er is­land na­tions with eas­i­er process­es.

“It al­so re­duces the risk of lost doc­u­men­ta­tion and the need for a phys­i­cal fil­ing space and saves time and en­er­gy for all par­ties in­volved.”

On the sin­gle har­monised form (SHF)is­sue, Bernard-Cal­len­der said the Yacht Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (YSATT) has worked tire­less­ly with T&T’s Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try to pro­duce the form.

She said the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the sin­gle har­monised form that can be ac­cessed on­line by vis­i­tors will al­low them to check in ahead of ar­rival, sav­ing them hours of fill­ing out pa­per­work when they ar­rive.

“It can al­so be used to in­form the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties be­fore­hand of the vis­it­ing yacht or leisure craft. The rest of the Caribbean re­gion is hav­ing great suc­cess with the use of the sin­gle har­monised form for all vis­it­ing ves­sels,” the yacht­ing agency head high­light­ed.

On this form, she not­ed that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a sin­gle clear­ance stamp is need­ed to al­low cruis­ing with­in all T&T port vicini­ties (name­ly Ch­aguara­mas, Scar­bor­ough, and Char­lot­teville).

Present­ly, Bernard-Cal­len­der said for every port that a ves­sel en­ters, the cap­tain or ship­ping agent rep­re­sen­ta­tive must go in­to im­mi­gra­tion to re­port the ves­sel’s ar­rival.

“Up­dat­ing this sys­tem to al­low cap­tains free move­ment be­tween des­ig­nat­ed ports once stamped in­to the coun­try will ben­e­fit us tremen­dous­ly as it does in our sis­ter Caribbean is­lands. This will al­so elim­i­nate the present re­quire­ment of an ad­di­tion­al bay hop­ping form in each port vicin­i­ty. Our reg­u­la­tions have led to some cap­tains ex­press­ing a lack of de­sire to re­turn to T&T due to process­es and “feel­ing un­wel­come,” she lament­ed.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, as this in­dus­try falls un­der her min­istry’s purview, and ques­tioned what was be­ing done about sin­gle har­monised form.

She replied: “The SHF has been de­vel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers. Work is cur­rent­ly on­go­ing to re­fine and fi­nalise the SHF with se­lect­ed min­istries and agen­cies as it re­lates to the leg­isla­tive as­pect of the doc­u­ment. In par­al­lel, the Min­istry is al­so ex­plor­ing, with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED), the pos­si­bil­i­ty of digi­tis­ing the en­try and de­par­ture clear­ance process­es for cruis­ers via the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Sail Clear Sys­tem. Sail Clear is an on­line plat­form that pro­vides pre-ar­rival and pre-de­par­ture no­ti­fi­ca­tions for cruis­ers and is al­ready in use in 39 coun­tries in the re­gion in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and St Lu­cia.”

As a re­sult of the bu­reacra­cy in­volved in en­ter­ing T&T’s wa­ters, there has been a de­cline in yachts ar­riv­ing in this coun­try.
Sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta from the Yacht Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (YSATT) showed in 2018, it was 771, in 2019, 284, and in 2020 from Jan­u­ary to March, 188 yachts docked. March 2020 was the month that the Gov­ern­ment or­dered the clo­sure of T&T’s bor­ders due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The da­ta al­so showed in 2021 about US$500,000 was spent com­pared to oth­er years when yachties would have spent as much as US$15 mil­lion.

Su­pery­acht In­dus­try

In paint­ing a pic­ture of the im­por­tance of the yacht­ing in­dus­try to coun­tries, Bernard-Cal­len­der said amid the COVID-19 cri­sis, the glob­al mar­ket for the yacht in­dus­try was es­ti­mat­ed at US$7.4 bil­lion in the year 2020 and pro­ject­ed to reach a re­vised size of US$10.8 bil­lion by 2026.

The su­per yacht, one of the seg­ments analysed in the re­port, is pro­ject­ed to reach US$3.6 bil­lion by the end of 2026.

She iden­ti­fied that the yacht in­dus­try mar­ket in the Unit­ed States ac­count­ed for US$2.7 bil­lion in the year 2021.

“The coun­try cur­rent­ly ac­counts for a 32 per cent share of the glob­al mar­ket. Chi­na, the world’s sec­ond largest econ­o­my, is fore­cast to reach an es­ti­mat­ed mar­ket size of US$1.2 Bil­lion in the year 2026 trail­ing the com­pound an­nu­al growth rate (CA­GR) of 7.5 per cent.”
How­ev­er, she said there are bar­ri­ers for the su­per yachts to en­ter this coun­try, due to the lack of ad­e­quate berthing fa­cil­i­ties.

“Our is­land’s cur­rent berthing fa­cil­i­ties are not equipped to ac­com­mo­date more than three vis­it­ing ves­sels at the same time, nor do they have the ap­pro­pri­ate wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, and san­i­ta­tion in­fra­struc­ture that is manda­to­ry for su­per-yacht mari­nas. As such, the plan­ning and con­struc­tion of a su­per-yacht ma­ri­na is es­sen­tial to ac­com­mo­date larg­er num­bers of ves­sels at a time. For the last four years, we have been per­mit­ted for yachts to berth at the Cruise Ship Com­plex and Hy­att Wa­ter­front. The man­age­ment of the Cruise Ship Com­plex has great­ly as­sist­ed with giv­ing our clients ac­cess. Shore pow­er can be ac­cessed at the Cruise Ship Com­plex on re­quest. An up­grade of these fa­cil­i­ties will bring a great boost to our econ­o­my,” the yacht­ing agent em­pha­sised.
An­oth­er bar­ri­er she stat­ed was the non ex­is­tence of pro­to­cols for su­per yachts that car­ry he­li­copters. Bernard-Cal­len­der men­tioned that many su­per yachts over 250 feet in length usu­al­ly car­ry small he­li­copters on board.
“In the past, the lack of reg­u­la­tions has re­sult­ed in such ves­sels leav­ing our wa­ters due to the lack of reg­u­la­tions and re­sul­tant con­fu­sion. We ur­gent­ly need to im­ple­ment reg­u­la­tions for ves­sels ar­riv­ing with he­li­copters on board and those who are de­sirous of lift­ing off ves­sels for aer­i­al tours of our is­lands,” she stressed.

Bernard-Cal­len­der did point out that in 2022 the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary (THA) of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties & Trans­porta­tion, Tashia Bur­ris ac­com­mo­dat­ed a re­quest for a very im­por­tant su­per yacht client who vis­it­ed the is­land’s shores.

“This sup­port clear­ly showed us that the THA is ready to part­ner with us to take the su­per yacht in­dus­try to the next lev­el for the is­land. We look for­ward to fu­ture talks with the THA on what can be done to suc­cess­ful­ly grow the econ­o­my through yacht­ing,” she dis­closed.

Asked about the crime sit­u­a­tion, Bernard- Cal­len­der not­ed it has been a cause for con­cern for all vis­it­ing su­pery­achts but be­cause they are tru­ly de­sirous of vis­it­ing To­ba­go and then Trinidad, they move with a se­cu­ri­ty team at all times.