St. Vincent and the Grenadines missed out on as much as US$1 billion in revenue from citizenship by investment (CBI) over the last decade, says Prime Minister Godwin Friday.
He said on Hot 97 FM on Friday that some of his Caribbean colleagues whose countries operate the programmes have questioned Kingstown’s decision not to get involved in under the Unity Labour Party, which was voted out of office in November, after 25 years.
Luke Boyea, a host of the show, said that he recently met a senior official of the St. Lucia Labour Party, a sister party of the ULP, which said that SVG under Ralph Gonsalves and his ULP government, “had become the laughing stock.
“We were making all these big pronouncements. We’re talking like we’re a big shot, but on the ground, everybody can see what it was,” Boyea said.
Under CBI, people are granted citizenship and the right to hold the country’s passport after making a significant contribution to the country’s economic development.
SVG remains the only of the five independent members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) that does not have a CBI programme.
However, Friday has said that his New Democratic Party (NDP) administration will follow through on its election campaign promise and introduce a CBI programme this year.
Gonsalves, who is now the opposition leader, says he remains firmly opposed to CBI, which he has repeatedly likened to selling passports, and attracting the ire of his Antiguan counterpart, Gaston Browne, when he suggested last year that CBI is inherently corrupt.
In his radio interview on Friday, Prime Minister Friday noted that his party has met some of what it pledged to accomplish in 60 days, adding that some of them were deferred to later this year.
“… obviously, with the situation now, with the war and its uncertainty and so on. All of those things affect, you know, choices that we make, and timing in which we do them.
“And, it would be irresponsible to simply disregard what’s happening in the world and simply do whatever you like,” the prime minister said, adding that as a responsible government, the NDP administration will consider these things as it goes forward.
“… but not to take us off the strategic objective, which is to manage the finances of the country in a way that enables us to sustain our debt load while providing for the basic needs of our people and increasing opportunities for businesses to invest, for prosperity, to come back to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.”
The prime minister, however, mentioned the repair of the Ottley Hall Marina and Shipyard and the introduction of CBI among the initiatives that will be started this year.
“The Ottley Hall Marina and Shipyard, that is something that has enormous potential. … We have several persons, serious people, who are interested in doing it,” he said of the flagship project of the last NDP administration (1984-2001), which the ULP government (2001 to 2025) left to go to ruin.
“We have hotel investments that are going to come. We have the citizenship by investment programme that we are committed to, and people – some of the guys on the other side, ‘Oh, you know the problems here, problems there’ and so forth.
“The point is that that is a debt-free, tax-free way in which to raise revenue for the government. You’re not borrowing it and you’re not taxing people to get it,” the prime minister said.
“The opportunity cost from that reckless decision that they made,” Friday said, adding that now that he is “in the Prime Minister’s club, so to speak, I get to talk to people in the region who have these programmes.
“And they’re looking at us like say, ‘Boy, what an opportunity you guys missed.’”
Asked about why Vincentians were fed the story that CBI is the devil, Friday said that one of the hosts “put his finger on” the reason.
“There are some people, they stand in the mountain and they shout loud, and everybody else, and some people believed it, and we lost out as a consequence.”
He noted that Dominica is building an international airport, largely using CBI money.
Friday estimated that SVG would have made at least US$1 billion from CBI over the last 10 years.
He said he asked another prime minister who said he did not understand why SVG did not implement CBI.
“And so, I said, ‘Well, give me a figure’. He said, ‘Well, 200,000,000 per year’,” Friday said, adding that the prime minister was quoting Eastern Caribbean Dollars.
“… but still a lot of money that you didn’t borrow. It’s a lot of money that you didn’t have to tax people for,” Friday said.
He said the country could have used that money to build the US$78 million hospital under construction at Arnos Vale, for which the ULP administration borrowed US$100 million from Taiwan.
