The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment says it is go­ing ahead with plans for es­tab­lish­ing a new re­gion­al air­line even as it ac­knowl­edged a move by oth­er sub-re­gion­al coun­tries to do so.

Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, re­spond­ing to an op­po­si­tion ques­tion re­gard­ing im­proved re­gion­al trans­porta­tion, told leg­is­la­tors that it is well known that the gov­ern­ment “has been strug­gling” with the cash-strapped LI­AT (1974) Lim­it­ed over the past three years.

“We would have got­ten it right from the on­set. We knew that if we were to al­low the oth­er share­hold­ers of LI­AT to col­lapse the air­line that it would have cre­at­ed a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem to con­nect Caribbean peo­ple and you would recog­nise that not with­stand­ing the fact that LI­AT is still op­er­at­ing there’s still a prob­lem in terms of meet­ing the de­mands of the Caribbean peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly in­di­vid­u­als with­in the OECS sub-re­gion.”

LI­AT (1974) is owned by the gov­ern­ments of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. It en­tered in­to ad­min­is­tra­tion in Ju­ly 2020 fol­low­ing in­creased debt and the im­pact of the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

“We have tried in the past to get all our OECS col­leagues on board to start an OECS air­line, but the prob­lem we have had, and this is…a prob­lem that ex­ist­ed for decades, is that to get a com­mit­ment for all of the coun­tries to fund an air­line has been a prob­lem,” Browne said.

“What would have hap­pened over the years, you would have had four coun­tries car­ry­ing the bur­den while the oth­ers ben­e­fit­ing from the ser­vices of LI­AT. It is no dif­fer­ent to­day, if any­thing it is prob­a­bly worse”.

Browne told leg­is­la­tors that as a re­sult of a lack of com­mit­ment, his ad­min­is­tra­tion de­cid­ed to pur­sue a new part­ner for the pro­posed LI­AT 2020 “which will be a new le­gal en­ti­ty that will not as­sume any of the li­a­bil­i­ties of LI­AT (1974).

“What­ev­er as­sets it ac­quires from LI­AT 1974, LI­AT 2020 will pay for them in full,” he said, ac­knowl­edg­ing that “we were un­able to at­tract in­vestors from with­in the re­gion, we went ex­tra-re­gion­al­ly and that is why we had to es­tab­lish a part­ner­ship with Air Peace,” a pri­vate Niger­ian air­line found­ed in 2013.

“Air Peace is a bil­lion-dol­lar com­pa­ny. In fact, just re­cent­ly it would have or­dered about US$300 mil­lion worth of air­craft. So it is sub­stan­tial in terms of its as­set base, it has the ex­pe­ri­ence and the ar­gu­ment has al­ways been with­in the re­gion that what­ev­er re­gion­al air­line that is es­tab­lished that you should have a pri­vate sec­tor com­po­nent to en­sure that we have the nec­es­sary ef­fi­cien­cies and to avoid the lega­cy is­sues that we have had with LI­AT in the past.”

Browne said he be­lieves that Air Peace would not on­ly bring as­sets in terms of cash and air­craft but al­so ex­per­tise “to help us to man­age LI­AT to en­sure it sus­tains vi­a­bil­i­ty”.

He said he is aware there are plans for a “sup­ple­men­tary OECS air­line, there is talk so far but no firm com­mit­ment and we have to watch that space and see how it de­vel­ops.”

The OECS lead­ers met ear­li­er this month to dis­cuss the is­sue of air trans­porta­tion in the re­gion and have ap­point­ed a tech­ni­cal team to fur­ther dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion.

Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit, speak­ing on the state-owned DBS Ra­dio, said that each of the mem­ber coun­tries of the OECS will have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the tech­ni­cal team “and then we will be en­gag­ing some con­sul­ta­tions to put in­to place the le­gal and cor­po­rate frame­work to ad­vance the de­ci­sions that would have been tak­en on Sun­day at that meet­ing of the OECS heads”.

The OECS groups the is­lands of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St. Lu­cia, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts-Nevis, Montser­rat, An­guil­la and the British Vir­gin Is­lands.

ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua, Sept 19, CMC –

CMC/hg/ir/2023