Above: a LIAT plane

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Taxes on intra-regional air travel have largely proven to be crippling for Caribbean carrier LIAT, and the company’s new CEO says lowering them would both increase demand and governments revenues.

Evans, who officially assumed office on April 22, said this week that, while taxes are “important to reinvest in aviation infrastructure,” he would like to see governments “fully examine the overall economic and social impact of LIAT.”

Evans said a lighter taxation regime would “stimulate greater demand and an increase in the ‘tax take’ back to [each] government.”

““We spend approximately US$12.5 million dollars a year here in Barbados, but all those jobs we create spend a further $25 million and most of that is, of course, taxable revenue to the government,” said Evans, who was a guest on the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s Destination Caribbean programme.

Evans said LIAT was worth more than $100 million USD each year to the region in terms of jobs and its tourism impact, outside of its airline activity.

He also said that meeting demand with increased capacity was not a major hurdle.

“Any airline faced with increasing demand will be happy with that situation and it would find a way either in its own right or in some sort of a cooperative fashion in order to provide that extra supply or capacity,” he said.

The new CEO also said regional carriers could collaborate.

“Whilst competition is absolutely essential, there is more we can do in cooperation with each other than we are doing at the moment,” he said.