Trinidad and To­ba­go man­u­fac­tur­ers and ser­vice providers stand to ben­e­fit from NH In­ter­na­tion­al Caribbean Ltd’s EC$666 mil­lion (US$243 mil­lion) con­tract to re­de­vel­op St Lu­cia’s Hewanor­ra In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, with op­por­tu­ni­ties span­ning con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, elec­tri­cal prod­ucts, plumb­ing, air con­di­tion­ing and spe­cial­ist sub­con­tract­ing.

NH In­ter­na­tion­al chair­man Emile Elias said the com­pa­ny’s first pri­or­i­ty was to max­imise the use of St Lu­cian labour, ma­te­ri­als, re­sources and ser­vices, but the scale of the project would al­so cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties for Trinidad and To­ba­go sup­pli­ers.

“Our first pri­or­i­ty is to the peo­ple of St Lu­cia, and to max­imise the use of St Lu­cian labour, St Lu­cian ma­te­ri­als, re­sources and ser­vices,” Elias said.

“How­ev­er, this project is so large that, even af­ter the pri­or­i­ties that we have for St Lu­cia, there will be enor­mous op­por­tu­ni­ties for the Trinidad and To­ba­go man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, which must be pre­pared to be as com­pet­i­tive as it has been in the past.”

Elias cred­it­ed Cari­com with help­ing T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers ex­pand be­yond the do­mes­tic mar­ket, ar­gu­ing that re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion had cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal com­pa­nies to com­pete for sup­plies on ma­jor Caribbean projects.

“The peo­ple who ben­e­fit­ed the most in the Caribbean are the man­u­fac­tur­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Among the po­ten­tial sup­pli­ers are man­u­fac­tur­ers of elec­tri­cal prod­ucts and PVC pipes, as well as com­pa­nies pro­vid­ing elec­tri­cal, plumb­ing and air-con­di­tion­ing ser­vices. The pre­cise range of sup­plies will de­pend on the project’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions and de­signs.

NH In­ter­na­tion­al will ap­proach es­tab­lished sup­pli­ers while con­sid­er­ing new busi­ness­es that have ex­pressed in­ter­est since the con­tract was re­port­ed in the Busi­ness Guardian last Sun­day.

“We will be reach­ing out to the tra­di­tion­al sup­pli­ers of ser­vices we have been us­ing over the past 30 years,” Elias said.

“Since the Guardian pub­lished the sto­ry last Sun­day, we have been in­un­dat­ed with ap­proach­es and re­quests for con­sid­er­a­tion, which we’re all tak­ing on board.”

He said it was too ear­ly to quan­ti­fy the val­ue of con­tracts that could go to Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es, de­scrib­ing the process as a work in progress.

Elias point­ed to NH In­ter­na­tion­al’s 1994 work on a wa­ter pipeline in New Prov­i­dence, Ba­hamas, as an ex­am­ple of how re­gion­al projects could gen­er­ate ex­port earn­ings for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.

The com­pa­ny pur­chased ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 kilo­me­tres of PVC pipe from a Trinidad and To­ba­go man­u­fac­tur­er and shipped it to the Ba­hamas, com­pet­ing against in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers.

“We can­not be the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Cari­com and not nur­ture that re­la­tion­ship,” he said.

On sup­pli­er se­lec­tion, Elias said NH In­ter­na­tion­al, as a pri­vate-sec­tor con­trac­tor, was not sub­ject to pub­lic pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures. He main­tained, how­ev­er, that the com­pa­ny would give man­u­fac­tur­ers a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete.

“We give a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to any man­u­fac­tur­er to com­pete for the sup­plies, and we talk to them open­ly,” he said, adding that se­lect­ed sup­pli­ers were al­so ex­pect­ed to be paid prop­er­ly.

St Lu­cian busi­ness­es are al­so ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit through the sup­ply of con­crete and re­in­forc­ing steel, labour, trans­porta­tion, equip­ment rental and bro­ker­age ser­vices.

Elias said the com­pa­ny was com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing lo­cal skills, cit­ing a crane op­er­a­tor who had joined the project with­out cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

NH In­ter­na­tion­al arranged for the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to con­duct the nec­es­sary train­ing, en­abling him to ob­tain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

The air­port con­tract cov­ers the ex­pan­sion of the ex­ist­ing ter­mi­nal and the de­vel­op­ment of air­craft aprons, where planes taxi and park. It forms part of a wider air­port de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme in­volv­ing sep­a­rate con­struc­tion pack­ages.

Elias said the St Lu­cian Gov­ern­ment had arranged fi­nanc­ing for the ter­mi­nal project and that NH In­ter­na­tion­al had con­fi­dence in its abil­i­ty to meet its con­trac­tu­al pay­ment oblig­a­tions.

Asked to com­pare St Lu­cia’s pay­ment prac­tices with those of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gov­ern­ment and state-owned agen­cies, he was blunt.

“To be kind, I would say it is chalk and cheese,” Elias said.

“They just don’t seem in­ter­est­ed in ho­n­our­ing the pay­ment terms of the con­tracts. It is very sad. Our coun­try is de­vel­op­ing a rep­u­ta­tion sim­ply for not pay­ing its bills on time or at all.”