Persaud says just contractual issues left to close airport deal

fter several setbacks, a lucrative $300 million deal to run the state-owned Grantley Adams International Airport (GAIA) is set to be closed by June, a key negotiator said Monday.

Professor Avinash Persaud, the investment and financial consultant who chairs the government’s negotiating team, told Barbados TODAY that delays in concluding the public-private partnership contract were due to meticulously working through all its details with lawyers since the start of the year.

The deal was scheduled to be completed by the end of last year. In a mid-December update, Prime Minister Mia Mottley told a Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry business luncheon that she expected the negotiations would finish by the end of January.

Nearly three months later, Persaud revealed that the parties to the deal had spent the time wrestling with a number of legal issues that had emerged.

“We are dealing with some final contractual issues…no stumbling block. It’s just that these kinds of contracts are complicated. We’ve been dealing with all kinds of…you know, ‘what if this happens and that happens’. One of the things lawyers bring to the table is that they say you can’t assume everything will go right, so you need to lay out ‘on what basis can you end the contract, on what basis could they end the contract?’ Things like that,” he explained.

Asked to provide a new timeline, the leader of the government’s negotiating team replied: “I am hoping that we will have a final contract to review in May, and my sense is that with most of the issues almost settled, we might be able to close it [contract] a month or so after that.”

Last July, GAIA Inc. and the investing stakeholders – the Private Office of Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum of Dubai, and Chilean company Agencias Universales SA – signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the government for a comprehensive investment package.

The PPP is for the investment, development and operation of the airport, a hemispheric hub for cargo, expanded airlift and additional luxury hotel capacity, jobs and enhanced customer experience.

Despite the late-order insertion of various legal provisions to address unforeseen events including natural disasters and hazards, Persaud maintained that the substance of the contract has not changed.

“It’s about dealing with all kinds of extreme situations to make sure there is what they [lawyers] call legal certainty,” he said. “But we have not changed any of the terms that were in the memorandum of understanding that was signed before. But the MOU is different from a contract by not having all of those things…the list of bases by which we can cancel the contract, the list of the reasons by which they can cancel the contract. That’s the thing we have spent the last months looking at.”

Persaud sought to give an assurance that there was no reason for alarm surrounding the delays in meeting the previous timelines for closing the deal.

“I am comfortable that it’s just a matter of getting legal certainty around the contract, rather than any commercial issues,” he said.

Last year, he had also given an assurance that in the proposed partnership, all current contracts would be honoured, including workers’ and tenants’ terms and conditions.

emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb