Basseterre, St. Kitts, November 12, 2015 (SKNIS)—A Canadian official contracting agency based in Ontario, Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), has partnered with the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis to have built a second cruise pier at Port Zante that will be able to accommodate two mega cruise ships to meet the demands of a growing tourism market.
“The Canadian Commercial Cooperation, which is a crown corporation of the Government of Canada approximately two months ago expressed confidence in taking part in infrastructural development in St. Kitts and Nevis specifically looking at our port development at Port Zante and offered assistance so we can access a Canadian solution in terms of financing and other areas, so the process started when we received a letter of introduction from the CCC signed by Luc Allary, “ the Honourable Ian “Patches” Liburd, Minister of Public Infrastructure, Posts, Urban Development and Transport, said.
Luc Allary, Director of Business Development and Sales in the Caribbean and Latin America for CCC, and Brenda Boncamper, Permanent Secretary (Ag) in the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between CCC and the Government of Nationality Unity on November 12 for the development of public infrastructure that will see an additional cruise pier possibly built in one year’s time for the next cruise season.
“Hopefully, we can move very, very quickly…we are here today as an indication…we’ve already been working on structuring some of the elements of the project along with our supplier,” Mr. Allary said.
“We have sent out to the market that we are going to develop the port because we see the situation at SCASPA (The St. Christopher Air and Sea Ports Authority) in terms of the cruise ship arrivals. We have near one million passengers which came last cruise season and it is projected that we will be over one million passengers this cruise season which have already started,” Minister Liburd said.
The Canadian Commercial Corporation has been around since 1946 and has close to 70 years of international contracting experience and a deep knowledge of Canadian industry to meet infrastructure project requirements.
“We’ve done airports, we’ve done hospitals, we’ve done energy projects, we’ve done transport, we’ve done a multitude,” Mr. Allary said.
Those who witnessed the signing of the MOU included Chief Executive Officer of SCASCPA, Marcellus Phillip, Chairman of the Board of SCASPA, Don Boncamper, other officials of SCASPA, Anthony J Da Silva of INNOTECH Services Ltd and Mr. Calvin Edwards, Deputy Financial Secretary.