Prime Minister Gaston Browne has argued the structure of the regional aviation industry limits the extent to which Caricom heads of government can take action to lower the cost of intra-regional travel.
“I understand the frustration, but when you look at the very structure of air travel in particular, and this is also applicable to sea travel, but airplanes are capital intensive, a single aircraft for LIAT may cost 20 something million dollars.
To have 10 of them is $200 million spread across a very limited population base…that in itself would result in costs that are ordinarily higher than developed countries where their airlines having the same high fixed costs can spread it over a larger population base…so it has to do with the structure of the industry,” Browne said.
Outgoing Chairman of Caricom and Prime Minister of Dominica Roosevelt Skerrit raised the issue of regional travel at the 37th Caricom Heads of Government summit in Georgetown, Guyana. He noted how expensive and difficult it was to travel intra-Caricom, versus from some Caricom Member States to places like the United States and the United Kingdom.
“Why is it cheaper to travel by air from Dominica to New York than it is to travel from Dominica to Guyana?” Skerrit queried. The Dominican prime minister also queried why more emphasis is not placed on using maritime transport to connect the Caribbean Sea.
But Browne argued, “Fundamentally, the very structure of the industry would actually result in higher costs in this region, not to say that there could not be some efficiency gains and some lowering of costs, and that perhaps Caricom governments should not be a little more responsive and lower the airport fees.
Those are interventions that can be made and perhaps ought to be made. But any notion that it could be cheaper to fly within the Caribbean than in other regions where you have larger population size, larger resource base etc, that is just impractical.”