Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty has promised a “favourable rental struc­ture” for small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es at the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go.

The new ter­mi­nal build­ing was hand­ed over to the Au­thor­i­ty on Sun­day, paving the way for its of­fi­cial open­ing in the near fu­ture.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Au­thor­i­ty said prepa­ra­tions are un­der­way for the full op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the air­port, with the on­board­ing of con­ces­sion­aires be­ing the fi­nal ma­jor step in en­hanc­ing the fa­cil­i­ty’s am­bi­ence and ser­vices.

How­ev­er, the To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has ex­pressed con­cerns that some of To­ba­go’s small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es may not be able to af­ford rental rates at the new fa­cil­i­ty.

Cham­ber pres­i­dent Cur­tis Williams has called for con­sid­er­a­tion to be giv­en to lo­cal busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing re­duced rental rates for a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od.

Mean­while, ven­dors who sell To­ba­go’s sig­na­ture treats say they are ner­vous about re­lo­cat­ing to the new ter­mi­nal. One fe­male ven­dor told Guardian Me­dia that she cur­rent­ly pays $56.25 per month in rent but would be re­quired to pay ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1,400 month­ly to op­er­ate at the new fa­cil­i­ty.

The Au­thor­i­ty, how­ev­er, has as­sured all ex­ist­ing small and mi­cro op­er­a­tors that they will be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to tran­si­tion in­to the new ter­mi­nal build­ing.

It said mod­ern kiosks, which will be main­tained by the Au­thor­i­ty, will be as­signed to mi­cro-busi­ness op­er­a­tors, who will not be sub­ject to min­i­mum an­nu­al rent re­quire­ments or turnover-based rental charges.

For oth­er con­ces­sion­aires, rental rates will be based on the size and lo­ca­tion of the al­lot­ted space, “con­sis­tent with the over­all com­mer­cial lay­out and op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments of the fa­cil­i­ty.”

Williams said fig­ures dis­cussed so far range be­tween US$25 and US$35 per square foot.

The Au­thor­i­ty ac­knowl­edged that some prospec­tive bid­ders were un­able to sat­is­fy the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty and eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria. How­ev­er, it main­tained that it re­mains com­mit­ted to a fair, trans­par­ent and com­pet­i­tive process.

It added that dis­cus­sions are con­tin­u­ing with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, recog­nis­ing the im­por­tance of lo­cal ven­dors in help­ing to show­case the au­then­tic To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­ence.