For some time now the opposition party led by Philip J. Pierre has admonished Prime Minister Allen Chastanet for choosing to place the cost of the HIA redevelopment project “on the shoulders of generations to come” when he could easily have adopted the SLP’s PPP approach instead.
Had he done so, Pierre and his party have repeatedly suggested, Saint Lucia would have had a state of the art Hewanorra without any financial burdens on taxpayers. The issue came up again at the most recent House session on Tuesday, when Statutory Instrument No. 94 of 2019, which authorised the Finance Minister to borrow US$202,500,000 to finance the HIA project, was revoked.
Said the prime minister: “Let me state clearly that this amount is not an additional borrowing for the HIA Redevelopment Project, but is simply a correction to Statutory Instrument No. 94 of 2019. The only difference between the resolution passed previously is that we have now included the names of the banks mentioned as being part of the syndicate.”
Although the Opposition Leader Philip J. Pierre didn’t dwell on this matter, he recalled: “During the debate I mentioned that if there was a syndicate of banks, why weren’t they being mentioned? And, as usual, I was ridiculed and laughed at, as if I didn’t know what I was saying. But today . . . and this will happen many times in the term of this government, they will have to come back and change and undo what they’ve done. This morning they are here and very sheepishly they say: ‘It’s not more money that is being borrowed!’ ”
He added: “We never said it’s more money being borrowed. When we discussed this resolution, members of the opposition made their position clear: we were not in support of borrowing to redevelop HIA and we still hold that position. We are very strong in our position that this borrowing will cloud the fiscal space and is borrowing that could be avoided. It is our deep conviction that this government should go the PPP route.”
He reminded the House, with reference to airport revenues, that the airport tax is not a sure thing as “revenue streams are not static. They change. If something happens to our industry, where is that revenue stream?”
In his turn, the prime minister thanked the opposition leader “for his comments” noted his “consistency,” then proceeded to torpedo all he had said: “I would really like to take on one of his more consistent arguments. The Leader of the Opposition, to his credit, brings up the same point both in the House and publicly, and I can well imagine the public’s confusion over this issue.”
After underscoring the significance of the HIA loan, Chastanet acknowledged that “everybody has a right to ask questions to gain clarity on this issue. Let me explain again for the public’s benefit, and hopefully for the benefit of members on the opposite side, what we inherited, what decisions we made and why we made them.”
He argued that according to the PPP arrangement negotiated by the SLP when it formed the government, Saint Lucia “would have to forego $60 of our airport tax for thirty years. That in turn could cost the country nearly EC$2 billion, if our average total arrivals is multiplied by the $60 airport tax over the next thirty years. That’s how much we were going to have to forego.”
He also explained that the $202.5 million loan amount isn’t just for the airport terminal: “The terminal was US$120 million. We’ve said that, but the terminal does not include the need for a new air traffic control tower. It also does not include a new taxi way. Nor does it include the resurfacing of the runway. And it also does not include the proper flood mitigation investment. Today, when we do these major infrastructural projects, the requirement by all the agencies is that we anticipate the continuation of global warming, and therefore we have to build our infrastructure to be able to deal with such things.”
His eyes locked on the opposition leader, the prime minister fired his final shot: “So the point is, where is this money going to miraculously spring from?” For once it seemed the opposition had run out of steam. The resolution was adopted without further argument.
