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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Seabridge woes cost Tobago businesses $750m

Govt must bail us out

by

2679 days ago
20180324

In the past year, To­ba­go busi­ness­es have suf­fered over $750 mil­lion in loss­es and the coun­try has spent mil­lions of dol­lars to fix the seabridge prob­lem. But as of to­day the cri­sis con­tin­ues and now, busi­ness­es are say­ing with­out a Gov­ern­ment bailout or some sort of as­sis­tance there is no hope of re­cov­ery.

Busi­ness own­ers in To­ba­go yes­ter­day told the T&T Guardian they now face the op­po­site prob­lem to what they did in the pe­ri­od May to Ju­ly last year. Back then they had prob­lems get­ting goods to stock their shelves and some shelves were emp­ty, but to­day they say their shelves are stocked “but the cus­tomers are just not there.”

Su­per­mar­ket own­ers said “goods are now ex­pir­ing on our hands.” In ad­di­tion, they say it now makes no sense stock­ing freez­ers with meats and oth­er cold prod­ucts and ware­hous­es are stocked with goods that are not be­ing sold.

Busi­ness own­ers said the es­ti­mat­ed $750 mil­lion in loss­es ex­cludes busi­ness­es forced to close their doors or re­pos­sessed by the banks.

Scores of work­ers have al­so been sent home and with a grow­ing un­em­ploy­ment and crime on the is­land, busi­ness own­ers say the time has come for Gov­ern­ment “to step up to the plate.”

Sev­er­al busi­ness own­ers said they are hop­ing Gov­ern­ment will come up with a “vi­able bailout plan and get us back our cred­it rat­ing be­cause they have de­stroyed our cred­it rat­ing.” They are ad­vo­cat­ing “com­pen­sa­tion for loss­es suf­fered,” be­cause they claim the banks are not ex­tend­ing any fa­cil­i­ties to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and peo­ple con­tin­ue to get fore­clo­sure no­tices. They added that their cred­it rat­ing is gone, they are “no longer bank­able,” they are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a cred­it crunch and things con­tin­ue to “look bleak be­cause the econ­o­my has to­tal­ly con­tract­ed.”

Even the con­glom­er­ates are af­fect­ed.

ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies deputy chair­man An­drew Sab­ga told the group’s an­nu­al stock­bro­kers meet­ing on Thurs­day, “The big prob­lem is de­mand has sig­nif­i­cant­ly curbed be­cause peo­ple are hav­ing prob­lems get­ting to and from To­ba­go.”

Sab­ga said a “large por­tion of the con­sump­tion is tourists and non-To­bag­on­ian ar­rivals.”

But de­spite the loss­es suf­fered by the To­ba­go busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, To­ba­go East Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy in­sist­ed in Par­lia­ment that all was well.

How­ev­er, bed and break­fast own­ers say their busi­ness­es have de­clined and Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Chris James says To­ba­go had suf­fered mas­sive­ly and he ex­pects the low oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els which have plagued the is­land’s ho­tel sec­tor to con­tin­ue.

New­ly-ap­point­ed To­ba­go Cham­ber chair­man Claude Benoit said he was sad­dened by the sit­u­a­tion, not­ing it had de­stroyed the con­fi­dence of peo­ple in To­ba­go.

“There is no cred­i­bil­i­ty, peo­ple are not even think­ing of com­ing to To­ba­go be­cause they don’t know how they will get back and vice ver­sa. The ques­tion is how long will it take to build back con­fi­dence in the sys­tem that they have de­stroyed? That is the main is­sue,” Benoit said.

Benoit said restor­ing con­fi­dence in the To­ba­go econ­o­my is “what will start to spur the econ­o­my for things to start hap­pen­ing. It is very se­ri­ous and when you lis­ten to oth­ers who say there are no prob­lems in To­ba­go I don’t know.”

He said the Cham­ber had agreed to set up a team with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to help ad­dress the prob­lems faced by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on the is­land. A re­port pre­sent­ed by econ­o­mist Vanus James, he said, rec­om­mend­ed that “we work with the THA and talk to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to come up with the nec­es­sary fund­ing to help the busi­ness­es.”

With banks no longer as­sist­ing busi­ness­es, he ad­mit­ted there is an “ur­gency to the sit­u­a­tion.”

As to the T&T Spir­it not re­turn­ing to the seabridge as promised yes­ter­day, Benoit said he found it “alarm­ing.”

“We are just hop­ing that those who are re­spon­si­ble just do their work and do it well so it could save the is­land go­ing fur­ther down. Be­cause can you imag­ine this now be­ing East­er, this is one of the biggest hol­i­days for the is­land and we don’t have a fer­ry to bring peo­ple here? It’s a very sad sit­u­a­tion.”

Own­er of Pen­ny Savers Su­per­mar­kets Lloyd Warn­er said as a cit­i­zen, what has hap­pened in the last year with the seabridge is an “in­sult for every To­bag­on­ian, that’s an in­sult as far as I am con­cerned, treat­ing peo­ple like this.”

He said the pain of what has hap­pened is “so se­vere” that it needs to be dealt with im­me­di­ate­ly, “be­cause I per­son­al­ly can­not look fur­ther than what is hap­pen­ing right now. Be­cause that is the main thing.”

Warn­er said the seabridge was the “life­line for To­ba­go, it is like some­one telling you they will block off your nose and tell you to breathe, it is the main thing that is life.”

Re­spond­ing to Web­ster-Roy’s po­si­tion that no one in To­ba­go is suf­fer­ing, Warn­er said, “Be­cause we don’t protest by burn­ing tyres and say­ing enough is enough, that says we are not suf­fer­ing?” See Page A5


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