Latest update March 24th, 2025 7:05 AM
Marriott investors remain alien, but Govt. says deal ‘closed’ on financing
The investors in the Marriott Hotel project remain alien, but the government insists that it has bagged all the financial backers it needs for the controversial project.
“The NICIL people advised that we have indeed closed that deal and it is fully invested,” said Dr Roger Luncheon, the government’s chief spokesman.
The Chinese construction company is aiming to complete the project for an August 2014 commissioning.
NICIL is the government’s investment arm, which operates independent of Parliament oversight, and collects billions of dollars that it refuses to place in the national coffers.
NICIL created a company called Atlantic Hotel’s Incorporated (AHI), through which it is funneling taxpayers’ money into the Marriott project that is without Parliamentary scrutiny or approval.
Dr Luncheon recently said that “a wide range of domestic, regional and further afield” interests are financing the project. But the government continues to hide the name of the investors it says it has.
Only last week, Georgetown’s leading businessmen dumped the Marriott Hotel project at the bottom of a list of national priority projects.
Despite the criticisms, the government pushes stubbornly ahead with the project; Chinese labour built it from scratch and at rapid speed.
The government had asked Republic Bank Trinidad Limited to pool together a group of financial institutions to fund the project; but there is no detail on this arrangement.
According to Dr Luncheon, included in the consortium of investors that has been sealed are local banking institutions.
“Banks here have invested,” he stated.
Finance and industry sources say the Marriott Hotel project is a high risk one, given that existing hotels are struggling to fill their rooms, but Government is pressing ahead and could end up putting US$24 million into the project. The overall cost of the project was put at US$51 million.
Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh had said that there was a market feasibility study conducted by the Marriott Hotel Group and one conducted in 2010 by an independent American firm. The American firm was not named, nor was the study by Marriott released.
The opposition has voted to halt public funding of the project and says it wants the so-called confidential documents released to the public.
The financing structure for the hotel locks in private investors for a return of their dollars but taxpayers’ money risks being washed away if the ambitious project fails.
Pessimism about the feasibility of the project stems from the fact that many of the country’s hotels concentrated in and around the capital, and built for Cricket World Cup 2007, are operating on less than favourable occupancy rates.
The Chinese construction company is aiming to complete the project for an August 2014 commissioning.
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