The long awaited extension of the Owen Roberts International Airport is planned to commence this year.
Speaking at the Fidelity Cayman Business Outlook conference at the Westin Casuarina Resort on Thursday, Premier McKeeva Bush said the plan would be to extend the runway inland instead of into the North Sound. Previous plans had called for an extension both ways, but he said the cost of extending the runway inland would be “$8 to $11 or $12 million, maybe a little more” while extending it into the North Sound would cost $35 million.
“What say ye?” he asked the estimated 350 people in attendance, adding the decision to go the least expensive route made sense.
Mr. Bush said extending the runway inland would necessitate “moving the road”, apparently in reference to the portion of Crewe Road in between the Dorcy Drive/Shedden Road roundabout and the Smith Road junction.
“Thank God there’s no ocean to see there,” he said, taking a jab at those who have protested the proposed closure of 2,500 feet of West Bay Road because it will take away their view of the ocean. “I suspect there will be a petition.”
The extension of the runway at Owen Roberts Airport has long been cited as a need in order to facilitate larger, long-haul jets, which are seen as necessary to attract more tourism from Europe and the US west coast. Cayman Enterprise City, the special economic zone that is expected to break ground in the first quarter of this year, has also cited the runway extension as important to the scope of its success.
Mr. Bush said he hoped all the “due diligence” required on the project before it could start would be completed by August of this year.
New Cayman Airways routes
Mr. Bush said government-owned Cayman Airways, which has long been a drain on the public purse, was doing much better, something evidenced by the fact that it was hardly discussed in the political area anymore.
“It’s no longer the political football it was,” he said.
He announced two new seasonal routes are planned to commence this year.
“Cayman Airways will start a Panama route in April, something like two times weekly,” he said, adding the scheduling would run through August. “It will be seasonal for now.”
He also said regular service to Dallas would start, possibly as soon as May.
“That, too, will be seasonal,” Mr. Bush said.
Cruise ship berthing facility
Speaking about the proposal to build the cruise ship berthing facility in George Town, Mr. Bush said he was “taking a lot of hell from the radio shows and editorials” about the choice of using China Harbour Engineering Company for the project.
“The Chinese is the best company to do cruise facilities,” he said. “Nobody else had the money, except Mr. Dart, and they wanted 99 years [for a lease of the upland portion of the project] and everybody said ‘no’ so we walked away.”
Mr. Bush said that in addition to the government – or any of its entities – not having to borrow any money to make the deal happen, the China Harbour proposal would include:
An upgrade Spotts Dock facility for the cruise ships during inclement weather;
A jetty in West Bay that would allow more cruise ship passengers to visit the Turtle Farm tourist attraction to help reduce its $9 million annual loss;
All materials used for the projects that could be purchased locally, would be purchased locally;
Labour imported for the project would have to use existing housing; there will be no trailers imported for foreign workers;
China Harbour will carry out ongoing maintenance on the port;
The upland development portion of the project will be done by local contractors;
Caymanians can purchase shares in the upland portion of the development;
After China Harbour pays off its investment – which the government thinks will be in 25 years – there will be a profit sharing scheme where government would receive 40 per cent of the profits.
New CTC chair and other announcements
Mr. Bush also made several other announcements, including that Nick Freeland, who retired as managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers last year, has taken over as the new chairman of the Central Tenders Committee.
On the tourism front, Mr. Bush said the figures for stay-over tourism in 2011, which will be released next week, will show more than 309,000 people arrived by air last year, the highest since 2001.
He also said another special economic zone would be established for reinsurance companies to help attract them to Cayman.
With regard to direct taxation, Mr. Bush said there would be no payroll tax, no income tax and no property tax in the Cayman Islands.
Challenges
Although he said we were living through “extremely challenging and uncertain times”, he said the challenges we face today “pale in comparison to what we’ve faced before”, referring to the period in Cayman before tourism and the financial services industry.
He called on the media to stop printing “the rubbish that is teaching our children division”.
He noted that he and his government take a lot of criticism for their decisions, but that those who criticise aren’t talking about alternative solutions.
Mr. Bush said there were two keys for Cayman to thrive: not being afraid to dream and to be willing to work together to make those dreams a reality.
He urged the many business people it the audience to start employing Caymanians again now that the financial crisis was easing somewhat and he vowed to work with businesses to ensure they got work permits for the top overseas talent they needed to stay competitive in a global market.
“Mediocrity will not prevail,” he said. “No one is going to give a billion dollars to mediocrity to manage.”
Mr. Bush said Cayman had to be welcoming to the overseas businesses it was trying to attract, allowing them to bring in the people the needed so they could truly establish here.
“If the companies only have a nameplate, then [overseas governments and regulators] will have a right to cuss us,” he said, noting that while such practices might have been true in the past, it wasn’t what the Cayman Islands was about now.