The nation has long been aware that the GPH agreement was far from the best transaction for St. Lucia, but as new details continue to emerge, it is becoming increasingly evident that the situation is far more serious than initially believed.
Despite GPH already claiming the lion’s share of our cruise ship revenues, the company now occupies approximately seventy-five percent of our berthing facilities. This has left the container terminal space critically limited. To make matters worse, it has been revealed that the government must now secure an additional US $40 million to carry out the essential dredging required to sustain operations.
What was the rationale in GPH paying off a US $20 million loan to stabilize the financial standing about one year ago and today a new loan of US $40 million is imposed upon SLASPA when ninety percent of the cruise income goes directly to GPH. One does not have to be a genius to realize that something mathematically does not add up. Something appears radically wrong at SLASPA and the hierarchy of the institution needs to come clean with he public.
For some reason containers seem to be piling up at an unusual way and the public needs to have answers as word on the ground indicates that the local merchants are unable to receive their containers on a timely basis. Is there an ongoing problem with the necessary equipment for loading and unloading the trucks?. Based on our knowledge of containers through port services there is an absence of normal transactional movement.