Published: Trinidad Express – January 24, 2024.
It has been more than two decades since the Caribbean region had an inter-island ferry. Now, in the space of one month, plans for two such services have been announced.
Earlier this month, Guyana’s President Dr Irfaan Ali revealed that the governments of Guyana, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago had formed a new corporation to launch a regional ferry system for passengers and cargo. Then, this week, a private company, Connect Caribe, announced plans to start a ferry service by the end of 2024, once their financing is in place. Travel between Trinidad and the eastern Caribbean may cost just US$100 for a round trip, if the company’s business model proves viable.
The last regional ferry vessel was the MV Windward, which until the late 1990s sailed between Venezuela and Trinidad, St Vincent, Barbados, and St Lucia. Many of the Caribbean islands have short-route ferries for domestic use–Grenada and Carriacou and Petit Martinique; St Kitts and Nevis; St Thomas to St John and St Croix and St Maarten to St Barth; and Tobago and Trinidad. But almost all of these services are subsidised by their respective governments, which is not ideal, and scaling up has never been possible.
The brute fact is, the viability of a regional ferry company (or companies) is a litmus test for a regional economy as a whole. In a 2013 interview, St Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said the unwillingness of the private sector to invest prevented a ferry service from becoming a reality. Mr Gonsalves was adamant that this should be a private sector venture, with governments only playing the role of facilitator by removing duty on the vessels and facilitating trade through few or no tariffs. Now, the private sector has stepped up.