Port Manager calls for regional collaboration to tackle common issues

Manager of the Antigua Barbuda Port Authority Darwin Telemaque has told a recently held seminar in Ottawa Canada that ports in the region need to work together to tackle the challenges that plage them.

Telemaque was part of an expert panel of the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB’s) seminar on Accelerating Development Optimizing Trade Connectivity and Logistics for Growth which focused on a study done by the bank on logistic performance in Grenada and St. Lucia last year.

As it relates to addressing these issues, he says there is no grand benefit that we can achieve doing something singularly as has been the norm.

“Because the same risks, same challenges exist. And so, we need to have a broader regional strategy that would allow us to actually receive benefits in terms of logistics, transport, cost of goods, improving trade, and all of the things that we’d like to see happening.”

Telemaque who is also the Chairman of the Port Management Association of the Caribbean, and Chairman of the OECS Port Committee also laments what he says is the excess burden placed on ports that relates to trade, since according to him, “ports don’t trade.”

“Ports handle cargo, and we have to separate the policy that actually creates the reason for trade from actual ports and try to design trade so that it requires that ports themselves are equipped to handle what trade generates.”

“So, what we have as regional islands, St. Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent, is that we are forced to handle trade from almost a unitary location. So South Florida feeds us, and so we handle trade from Miami and there’s very little inter-regional trade.

He adds, “I think the effort by our governments in recent times to try to spur on regional trade has to do with a lot more than ports. And I think ports get shot in the stick when we start saying, if we had better ports, we’d have more trade. That’s not necessarily true.”

Telemaque also weighed in on a part of the CDB’s report on the high costs on the port.

“I don’t think that the reason that we have high costs at our ports is just because there are fewer ships. As a matter of fact, I think the report points out that we are at risk because there are less ships. But also, the inability of our ports to be more efficient and productive may very well be driving the ships away,” he contends.