One of the mistakes I believe the Government of St Lucia made, was not to fully articulate a road map to the population as to how we are to climb ourselves out of this miry fiscal clay. While the 5% pay cut has dominated the discussions, by the government’s own admission, this measure will create a saving of less than 20% of the budget deficit for this year. It does not solve the problem. The Government of Barbados has to be applauded in that they chose to present such a road map to the country and have created a nineteen (19) month Fiscal Adjustment Programme and a Medium Term Growth and Development Strategy. The Fiscal Adjustment Programme has fifty eight (58) budgetary policies and the Medium Term Growth and Development Strategy has four hundred and fifty nine (459) strategic initiatives. St. Lucia must do the same. We cannot be running around as headless chickens splattering blood...

I listening with interest to an very irate Customs Officer expressing his disgust that he will be losing five percent of his hard earned income to finance Carnival revelry. He stated that Carnival is a business and he could not come to terms with the Government making a case for the removal of the subsidy on sugar and then giving duty free concessions and $ 1.1 million dollars to Carnival. He posited – Why should I contribute to these Band owners plunder? There is undoubtedly a need for a pre-frontal discourse on the debt situation of St. Lucia, and the conversation has to honest and factual. During the Small States Biennial Conference of the Commonwealth Secretariat held at Malborough House in July 2010, Ms Samantha Attridge presented a paper entitled ” Dealing with the Looming Debt Crisis of Commonwealth Small Vulnerable Economies”, It is an excellent analysis of...

The Governments of the Caribbean have a proclivity to adopt policies from large and more industrialized countries and attempt to implement these policies often with startling failure. There are distinct differences in the economy of a small island state and I continue to preach that there is need for our regional learning institutions to embrace their responsibility to become functional within our societies by engaging in relevant research. The Citizenship by Investment Programme has become the latest move to improve the fiscal position of OECS states. Let me say from the onset that there should be a common OECS position on this policy. You cannot have one country asking for $ 1.0 million and another asking for $ 300,000 XCD when you are in a common Economic space. In fact I would suggest that 10% of all Citizenship by Investment income in these OECS states should go to the OECS...

St. Lucia has been twice affected by significant island-wide flood damage in sixteen years. Tropical Storm Debbie hit in September 1994, and Hurricane Tomas visited on October 2010. This is a starling phenomenon, as each event has been described as 1 in 100 year events. If this is occurring so rapidly it means that all our hydrological design parameters have to change and a 1 in 20 year event is what was once a 1 in 100 yr event. Hurricane Tomas was a devastating occurrence and while the numbers for the damage are being tallied, undoubtedly it will be a huge sum. I believe we need to distinguish between the cost of the hurricane in overall damage to the island and the cost of the damage to the state owned sectors. One is not sure as to what sum the Prime Minister referred to when he identified a sum of $ 500 Million USD. Definitely, it cannot relate to state owned infrastructure, as I...