Brent Pin­heiro 

Brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt 

By the end of 2025, pas­sen­ger traf­fic in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean is ex­pect­ed to reach 789 mil­lion. And at a pro­ject­ed pas­sen­ger com­pound an­nu­al growth rate of 2.9%, the same rate as the glob­al av­er­age, one bil­lion pas­sen­gers are ex­pect­ed to trav­el through the re­gion’s air­ports by 2032.

But growth doesn’t hap­pen in a vac­u­um says ACI-LAC Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al Rafael Echevarne, and for the re­gion to be prop­er­ly equipped to han­dle that kind of growth US$83 bil­lion needs to be in­vest­ed by 2040. “Of this, US$30 bil­lion will be ded­i­cat­ed to green­field projects, new in­fra­struc­ture in the form of ter­mi­nals, run­ways or even en­tire­ly new air­ports that will serve emerg­ing mar­kets and un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties,” said Echevarne. 

ACI-LAC Director General Rafael Echevarne speaks at the ACI-LAC Annual Assembly, Conference & Exhibition at the Hyatt Regency. Photo: Abraham Diaz

The Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­gion is high­ly de­pen­dent on air-trans­porta­tion to dri­ve eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. “We lack the ex­ten­sive use of road or rail net­works. We don't have them and they will not come be­cause in the case of the Caribbean it's im­pos­si­ble to link is­lands with roads or rail,” Echevarne ex­plained. He added, “In the case of South Amer­i­ca, for ex­am­ple, the ge­og­ra­phy of our na­tions makes it ab­solute­ly im­pos­si­ble to have the type of rail­way de­vel­op­ments or high­ways that we find in the US or in Eu­rope.” 

As such, he warned there is an eco­nom­ic cost to fail­ing to ac­com­mo­date pas­sen­gers and called on the re­gion’s gov­ern­ments to fa­cil­i­tate in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment via the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tors. “Every mil­lion pas­sen­gers we fail to ac­com­mo­date means 9,500 jobs we do not cre­ate and 25 mil­lion in GDP we leave on the ta­ble. That's the cost of de­lay, de­lay in im­ple­men­ta­tion of all this in­fra­struc­ture. That's the price of un­der in­vest­ment,” he said.  

Echevarne was speak­ing on day one of the Air­ports Coun­cil In­ter­na­tion­al Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean An­nu­al As­sem­bly, Con­fer­ence & Ex­hi­bi­tion held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port of Spain on Mon­day. The con­fer­ence, which ends on Oc­to­ber 7th, is be­ing held in Trinidad & To­ba­go for the first time in over 20 years. T&T was se­lect­ed to host last year.