PM Briceño: San Pedro Needs Larger Airport

San Pedro’s busy airstrip may one day not be enough. There is talk of replacing the John Greif II Municipal Airport with a larger facility. And this idea that has residents, tourism stakeholders and the airlines talking. The Prime Minister was asked whether it is going to happen and how far along the plan is.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“That is a discussion that has been going on since 2020. The number of flights in San Pedro continue to increase. The Ministry of Tourism continues to expand that industry and as a government we can’t think about today or tomorrow or two years from now. We have to be looking at five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. The San Pedro Municipal Airport as it is cannot be expanded, so you cannot get bigger planes to fly into that municipal airport. So there has been a discussion, and all the airlines, the local airlines have been a part of the discussion as to what next. So obviously we’ve been in consultation with them. IDB have stepped in. IDB has been working on a proposal. They’ve been doing studies as to how and where best we can be putting a new station. But we are just in the discussion period. There’s no, no decision has been made as yet. So IDB has to finish the proper study and then present it to, to me as the minister responsible for civil aviation and for finance, and then I would then take that and discuss it with the airlines and the town council and everybody. And if we believe that it is in the interest of the country and for the development of the country and for the safety and meeting the needs of the tourism industry, then it’s a decision that we may have to make, but we’re not there yet.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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