An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne is mak­ing it clear that there is no con­tention be­tween his gov­ern­ment and the T&T Gov­ern­ment over Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) ex­pand­ing its op­er­a­tions in­to the East­ern Caribbean.

Yes­ter­day, the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er news­pa­per pub­lished an ar­ti­cle which stat­ed that the An­tiguan gov­ern­ment said it in­tend­ed to “fight” plans by CAL to ex­pand its op­er­a­tions in­to the East­ern Caribbean at the ex­pense of the Lee­ward Is­lands Air Trans­port (LI­AT).

How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Browne told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that a state­ment made by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert dur­ing his Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, that CAL planned to lease 12 new pas­sen­ger air­craft to deal with in­creas­ing de­mand, had caused some con­cern.

In jus­ti­fy­ing the move, Im­bert not­ed that fol­low­ing the ex­it of LI­AT, the Caribbean had been ex­hibit­ing strong air trans­port de­mand.

Browne said what his Cab­i­net was say­ing was, “hold on a sec­ond, LI­AT has not ex­it­ed the mar­ket. Up to this point we are still op­er­at­ing, and we de­ter­mine that LI­AT 74 Lim­it­ed will tran­si­tion in­to LI­AT 2020 and con­tin­ue to pro­vide avi­a­tion ser­vices to the re­gion.”

He shared a state­ment is­sued fol­low­ing the week­ly Cab­i­net meet­ing yes­ter­day with Guardian Me­dia.

It not­ed, “The Cab­i­net took note of the scal­ing-up of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), in­clud­ing the pur­chase of sev­er­al ATR Air­craft with the ex­pec­ta­tion of plac­ing them on routes ser­viced by LI­AT 1974 Ltd.

“The state­ment about CAL’s ex­pan­sion came from a Trinidad and To­ba­go par­lia­men­tar­i­an who spoke in their par­lia­ment re­cent­ly; it is ev­i­dent, the Cab­i­net con­clud­ed, that re­viv­ing LI­AT is not an ob­jec­tive of Trinidad whose lead­ers are de­ter­mined to cap­ture the avi­a­tion ser­vices that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da once ex­port­ed.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued, “The Cab­i­net is de­ter­mined to have LI­AT re­sume its role, pro­vid­ing hun­dreds of jobs to res­i­dents and cit­i­zens of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. Air Peace (Niger­ian car­ri­er) has agreed to pur­chase a sig­nif­i­cant share in LI­AT (2020) and to pro­vide the cap­i­tal nec­es­sary to re­turn LI­AT to its for­mer glo­ry.”

Browne said the state­ment was not of­fen­sive but was sim­ply stat­ing that it was in­ac­cu­rate to say that LI­AT is ex­it­ing the mar­ket.

“We re­spect the right of CAL to scale up. LI­AT 2020 is in the process of get­ting all of its ap­proval, as it takes some time and hope­ful­ly, by the end of the year, we can tran­si­tion from LI­AT 1974 to LI­AT 2020, which cre­ates more than 600 jobs,” he added.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, yes­ter­day, Chief of Staff in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Li­onel Hurst, told re­porters, “CAL es­sen­tial­ly in­tends to take from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da the avi­a­tion ser­vices that we have been pro­vid­ing by way of LI­AT for more than 60 years. So we are go­ing to con­tin­ue to fight this ap­proach of try­ing to take from An­tigua and Bar­bu­da the im­por­tant role which LI­AT did in not on­ly pro­vid­ing ser­vice to in­ter-re­gion­al trav­el in the Caribbean but more im­por­tant­ly for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da all those jobs.”

LI­AT (1974) is owned by the gov­ern­ments of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.