Caribbean Airlines should be able to break even by the end of 2014, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance Vasant Bharath said yesterday. Bharath said that was the impression he has received from CAL chairman Rabindra Moonan and vice-chair Mohan Jaikaran. He said Jaikaran and acting chief executive Robert Corbie made a presentation to him and Finance Minister Larry Howai last week, outlining a restructuring proposal over the next 24 months. “What we have agreed is that I will lead a high-level team to Jamaica in June and will discuss the way forward with them,” he said. He said the intention of a CAL/Air Jamaica merger was to have a pan-Caribbean airline. “It has not worked as inten¬ded and, really, that’s because of the intervention of a number of low-cost carriers to the market place and usurped a lot of passenger traffic,” he said. He added that regarding the bubbling dispute between CAL and the region’s other carrier LIAT over CAL’s Government-funded fuel subsidy, it would be premature for him to comment, until LIAT’s chairman and St Vincent Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves and Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar met to discuss the situation further.
CAL should break even by 2014
