Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our says he has no up­date on when the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal will be of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over, but con­firmed the trans­fer to his min­istry is ex­pect­ed soon.

“It is still un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture,” Za­k­our said dur­ing Thurs­day’s Post Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

When pressed about de­lays, he added, “I don’t have an up­date on that, sir.”

On when the ter­mi­nal may fi­nal­ly open to pas­sen­gers, Za­k­our said sim­ply, “Soon.”

In Ju­ly, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John said the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) was con­duct­ing walk-throughs with the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, with a view to hand­ing over the fa­cil­i­ty by mid-Au­gust.

Once the han­dover takes place, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty will shift to Za­k­our’s min­istry, and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty will de­ter­mine the of­fi­cial open­ing date.

The ter­mi­nal was com­mis­sioned in March 2025 but has not yet be­come op­er­a­tional. Out­stand­ing work in­cludes paving the run­way and ad­dress­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments, such as strength­en­ing the air­port’s fire re­sponse.

THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said he was con­cerned that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion could be threat­ened af­ter a fire ten­der broke down on the run­way for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od. Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor and Tourism Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris have both spo­ken of the ur­gency of open­ing the ter­mi­nal, say­ing it is crit­i­cal for To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor and over­all econ­o­my.

The two-storey ter­mi­nal, built by Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and man­aged by NID­CO, was re­port­ed as “prac­ti­cal­ly com­plet­ed” ear­li­er this year. It in­cludes nine de­par­ture gates, VIP lounges, a pub­lic de­par­ture hall, ad­vanced check-in sys­tems and ex­pand­ed park­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

The project, which be­gan in Ju­ly 2020, cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$129.8 mil­lion, with land ac­qui­si­tion bring­ing to­tal costs to about US$44 mil­lion.