ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States leaders met on Sunday to discuss the issue of air transportation in the region. It appointed a technical team to discuss the situation further.
Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, speaking on the state-owned DBS Radio on Tuesday, said that each of the member countries of the OECS would have a representative on the technical team, “and then we will be engaging some consultations to put into place the legal and corporate framework to advance the decisions that would have been taken on Sunday at that meeting of the OECS heads.”
The OECS groups the islands of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts-Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands.
Caribbean countries have been hard hit by the collapse of LIAT (1974), which entered into administration in July 2020 following increased debt and the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines own the airline. While the Barbados and St. Lucia governments have made available funds to cover the three-year outstanding debt to the workers in their countries, that has yet to be the case with employees in the other islands.
The meeting on Sunday was to discuss a document from the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) outlining a proposal for the financing and operation of a regional airline.
Late last month, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves told reporters that the initial owners of the airline could be the OECS governments, “but we would have to engage the Caribbean Development Bank on this exercise too.
Prime Minister Skerrit, also the chairman of the 15-member regional integration movement, CARICOM, said he would not want to comment on statements made by Prime Minister Gonsalves regarding the rationale for the new airline.
“In all my years as prime minister, I have never been in the business of reacting to colleagues say. Every prime minister has the right to speak for and on behalf of their people, and Prime Minister Gonsalves certainly has that right.
“All I would say on the matter is that we did have the meeting as OECS heads in respect to the regional travel debacle that we have been facing over the last couple of years and looking at solutions to those challenges, one in the immediate term and secondly in a long time.
“We had asked the CDB, and they have agreed, and they have been working on this consultancy to make recommendations to us on how do we go about addressing the regional travel situation,”
Skerrit told radio listeners that “as a matter of fact, we had a meeting as late as Sunday gone for several hours reviewing the report and putting some structures to advance the recommendations by the CDB in its consultancy.
“We are looking at all of the available consideration options. Is it going to be a convergence of what Prime Minister (Gaston) Browne has done so admirably, causing LIAT to continue to fly with a new dispensation”?
Skerrit said he had informed his OECS colleagues that “we certainly have to learn from what Antigua has done with LIAT, all be it with two planes.
“They are providing a service not in the original form of LIAT, but they have the two planes flying, and how can we join forces to solve this regional problem? So, in Dominica’s case, we are open to whatever recommendations we believe could solve the problem of regional travel.
“We are working feverishly on this, and Dominica is committed to playing its part in profound ways in ensuring that we can solve this problem in the short and certainly in the long term.”
Skerrit said he also believed that Prime Minister Gonsalves would have been speaking from the point of view of some legal issues surrounding LIAT, and “We asked for a legal opinion on what are the implications for continuing with LIAT 2020 or whatever name you want to call it, recognizing that LIAT itself has been in receivership and how do you address these legal and corporate issues goi8nf forward”.
Skerrit said there’s discussion about whether a new entity, wholly divorced from the original LIAT “would be more efficacious to advance or the current.
“And so these are the discussions we have been having, and we have appointed a technical team to advance our cause.”
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Browne said his administration was pushing ahead with plans to launch the inter-regional airline LIAT 2020 by November. He remained hopeful that other regional countries would participate in the new venture.
Browne acknowledged being unable to get other countries in the OECS to join the initiative, given that some have been speculating that if they invested in LIAT 2020, the creditors of LIAT 1974 would go after LIAT 2020.
“We said to them that they are separate legal entities, and there is absolutely no basis in law in which creditors of LIAT 1974 could pursue LIAT 2020 as a new limited liability company”.
Browne said there had been instances in the region and the United States where companies had become liquidated and formed new companies just as LIAT 2020 was being established.
“I find some disingenuousness within the region for which some heads argue that this new entity will automatically be liable for LIAT 1974 Limited liabilities. That’s not the case,” he insisted, adding, “Some of our heads are lawyers, and they know better.”
“LIAT 1974 is completely different from LIAT 2020. They are two different entities. I want to clear that issue,” he said, adding, “LIAT 1974 will be placed into liquidation, and the assets of LIAT 1974 will be bought by LIAT 2020.
“So, having given full market value for the assets, we also intend to buy the planes. LIAT 1974 or its creditors can make any claim on LIAT 2020 Limited,” he said.
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