Executive chairman of the Four Seasons project, Professor Avinash Persaud, is setting the record straight on the near half-billion-dollar hotel and residential development.
Responding to statements from Leader of the Opposition Owen Arthur in St John last Sunday night that a promise to restart Four Seasons was just another of Government’s delusions, Persaud said the project should not be made into a political football.
Arthur told a by-election campaign meeting at Gall Hill, St John, in support of Barbados Labour Party candidate Hudson Griffith that Government had guaranteed the borrowing of $60 million to restart the project at Paradise from the same people who would have financed the now abandoned flyovers project.
But, he added, $35 million of the overall sum was used to repay the Royal Bank of Scotland and most of the remaining $25 million was used to repay local creditors.
“There is really no money available to start back Paradise. How often have you heard them tell you: ‘It starting back in March, then in September, and it was supposed to be starting back in January’?” he asked.
However, speaking to the DAILY NATION?last night from Port-of-Spain where he was meeting with officials of ANSA?McAL Merchant Bank regarding long-term financing for Four Seasons, Persaud stressed that it was in Barbados’ From Page 1. interest that Four Seasons be on track, and denied suggestions from Arthur that some investors who had shown an interest in financing the restart were now having second thoughts.
“None of our investors has pulled out . . . . Four Seasons is already 25 per cent complete and we are even signing up new potential villa owners,” the executive chairman pointed out.
The lead spokesman for the project said while there were no tractors or earth-moving equipment on the site, dilapidation studies were completed and tenders were already out for work.
He also invited the Opposition Leader to visit the Paradise, St Michael site for a first-hand assessment and progress report.
Persaud said, too, that some investors “are getting quite excited about their villas and have been given an opportunity to do some redesigning” of their luxury homes.
Arthur, in his platform speech, charged the Democratic Labour Party was playing with people’s hopes and expectations with announcements and pronouncements of thousands of imminent jobs and foreign exchange being gained through proposed projects such as those at Merricks, St Philip, and Pickering, St Lucy.
The St Peter MP said Government was in a serious financial crisis, unable to pay its bills, and still with the spectre of the unresolved financial messof CLICO hanging over its head.
