Friday, November 7 2008

Government may turn to German luxury car manufacturer BMW to provide 200 VIP vehicles for next year’s Fifth Summit of the Americas and Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Trinidad.

Addressing the post-Cabinet news conference at the Prime Minister’s Residence and Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s yesterday, Prime Minister Patrick Manning revealed that during his visit to Munich, Germany last week he had a discussion with officials of BMW about leasing the vehicles.

“What we might well do is go directly to the car manufacturers. I visited the BMW showroom in Munich, we had discussions on the matter and I have to discuss it with our people here,” the Prime Minister stated.

Manning said BMW officials told him the member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) asked to lease vehicles from the company for one of their recent summits. APEC member nations include the United States, Canada, Mexico and New Zealand whose leaders are expected to attend next year’s meetings.

“They went directly to BMW and BMW but a proposal and a package in place and supplied cars for temporary use in the APEC summit and then they took the cars back afterwards which is exactly the arrangement that we want,” he declared.

The Prime Minister said the problem with the proposals from the local car dealers to lease vehicles is that they “have priced the alternative structures at such a level driving you in the direction to buy the cars.”

“That’s what they are trying to do, which we are determined not to do. We don’t need 200 cars,” Manning added. On Tuesday, Minister in the Ministry of Finance Mariano Browne said no company has been selected as yet to lease vehicles for the summits.

“We are looking at our options,” he said.