Chairman of the LIAT Shareholders Government Group of Countries and Prime Minister of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves has expressed fears that the closure of the regional island hopping carrier, LIAT is imminent as most of the countries which use the carrier services are not responding favourably to the airline’s request for US$5.4 million to ensure its survival.
Gonsalves made the statement as a guest on a popular current affairs programme in St. George’s run by the Grenada Broadcasting Network (GBN).
The Vincentian leader told the programme host that Grenada is the only government that acceded to LIAT’s request by pumping approximately $1 million into it.
“…Prime Minister Mitchell has put in approximately 1 million dollars EC towards emergency funding because he is interested in seeing LIAT remain in the sky”, he said.
According to Dr. Gonsalves, due to the lack of financial input from the other shareholding countries, LIAT’s closure is imminent.
He said that LIAT has a compliment of 10 aircraft – seven are leased and three are owned by the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) due to monies borrowed and a decision will soon have to be made on the way forward.
“…We probably will have to ask the CDB to sell those three aircraft and operate seven of them and then get other smaller airline like One Caribbean to fly between here and St. Lucia, rather than get LIAT to fly on one of the routes which is going to Trinidad which is not economical to cut it”, he remarked.
“… The governments have not been responding so the shareholders are reaching a critical point now and if you ask me, what is likely to happen … there will be a transitional restructuring leading to a closure of LIAT,” he said.
Dr. Gonsalves pointed out that a new airline would then have to be the next option for the region if LIAT is closed.
THE NEW TODAY – Closure
