Port Zante is getting bigger

By the Caribbean Journal staff

The Canadian Commercial Corporation has partnered with the government of St Kitts and Nevis to build a second cruise pier at Basseterre’s Port Zante, the government announced.

The pier means the port will be able to accommodate two mega cruise ships.

“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,” said St Kitts and Nevis Minister of Public Infrastructure, Posts, Urban Development and Transport Ian Liburd.

The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding for the project, which could possibly be built by next year’s cruise season (2016-2017), the government 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,” Liburd said. “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.”