A “Doing Business Unit” will be established within the Ministry of Finance.
The unit will address not only the indicators that contribute to the World Bank’s theoretical Ease of Doing Business Index, but also “the more practical impediments to actual business establishment and operation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines”.
Minister of Finance, Camillo Gonsalves, said in his budget address this month that the health of the Vincentian economy is directly and causally connected to the health of our private sector.
“We view the private sector as partners in, and drivers of, employment, growth and development. Budget 2019 is replete with initiatives that provide both direct and indirect benefits to the Vincentian private sector.
“These include Renewal @40, the modernisation of customs procedures to facilitate quicker times to clear shipments, technical innovations to NIS and the Inland Revenue Department, new crime fighting tools and initiatives, measures to facilitate an influx of additional tourists, enhancement of operations at the Argyle International Airport, renewable energy initiatives to make the cost of energy cheaper and more predictable, enhancements to our road and ICT infrastructure, and initiatives in fisheries and agriculture, including the launching of the medicinal cannabis industry.”
He said that preliminary data from the National Insurance Services indicates that the number of active employers has rebounded to exceed pre-crisis levels, and is 24 per cent higher than the active employers on record in 2000.
“We fully expect our talented and entrepreneurial private sector to take advantage of the promising opportunities in the Vincentian economy and the initiatives in Budget 2019 to record further growth in the medium term,” Gonsalves told Parliament.
Quoting from the above “Camillo Gonsalves, said in his budget address this month that the health of the Vincentian economy is directly and causally connected to the health of our private sector”.
Is this a road to Damascus conversion for the socialist the minister? That the health of the Vincentian economy is directly connected to the health of our private sector?
But there again perhaps not, since he has qualified his statement by adding that the health of the Vincentian economy is “causally connected” to the health of our private sector, thus confirming what both he and his father has always done, pursued begging for aid relief abroad, in place of good economic planning here at home.
They have decapitated and destroyed our private sector in pursuit of their old soviet dogma, just as their heroes Castro, Chavez and Maduro have all done locally, and all to equally the same disastrous results. Therein lay our own “Road to Serfdom.”
( https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/Road%20to%20Serfdom%20in%20Cartoons.pdf )
And as Venezuela collapse into starvation and ruin our Minister do not see our Vincentian wellbeing as totally dependent on our private sector but rather on their worldwide begging as their mainstay for our wellbeing.
Long will it indeed continue while they remain in charge and the tens of thousands remain unemployed here.
It is all more hogwash. The mere fact that he has to start yet another government agency that has to be paid for by the taxpayer shows his lack of concern for the nations finances. Continue to take more from the people to expand the size of the government. When the government is by far the largest employer in the country means we are in trouble. Government does not and should not create products that can be sold locally and abroad to bring in funds. (this includes building houses or managing hotels to compete with the Privat Sector). The sad truth is that this government does not know what it is doing, that is why we are such a poor nation and not going anywhere. If Camillo Gonsalves believed his own words than why is thier such high Customs Duties on machines and equipment that build the private sector and creates jobs? Why are all the taxes so high that all the prices are so high?
Sadly JAMAL, you are in a very small minority here in SVG who understands these undeniable facts! For sure, sky high Customs duties are not the only variable that is squeezing our economy, the regime’s attitude towards private businesses in general is yet another.
And such outright disdain as theirs for private businesses, comes from their thoroughly outdated pretentiously pseudo dogmas. Dogmas that was so prevalent in all old style Soviet and Marxist contempt for private enterprise.
This bunch proceed to confuse the mass of the people with their own inability to separate anti-colonialism from Marxism and Stalinism.
The family regime will beg worldwide and borrow and are continually putting up our Taxes to dig themselves out of their ever growing failures and when that is done, they then put up taxes even further again on the poor suffering SVG tax payers to cover even more borrowings and to sustain the none-jobs in an ever bourgeoning bureaucracy, while the few remaining private enterprise businesses suffer under the strain.
What folly indeed!
When lies prevail Jamal, old dogmatist to include Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and Lawyer Jomo Thomas were impressed. These individuals cannot escape their student past, a past when old style Soviet dogmas were the order of the day and when Fidel Castro’s narrative gained prominence in the Caribbean, the lies of soviet and communist economic success was hard to ignore.
However those lies of soviet and communist economic success have since been shown to be lies, issued by totalitarian regimes hiding true social and economic failures. The fact is that the soviets are no longer, Castro’s Cuba is an economic mess, Brazil’s recent experiment with socialism destroyed a once buoyant economy and well the example of Venezuela stands for itself and indeed now speaks for itself.
“Venezuelans risk ‘dangerous’ trek as official borders remain shut and more Venezuelans are crossing the armed group-controlled ‘trochas’ as main borders remain closed”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/venezuelans-risk-dangerous-trek-official-borders-remain-shut-190301200316001.html
“After attempts to deliver US humanitarian aid into Venezuela by self-declared interim president Juan Guiado, on Saturday 23rd February, the Simon Bolivar Bridge was shut at President Nicolas Maduro’s orders. Shipping containers filled with sand barricade the bridge, where more than 30,000 Venezuelans crossed daily to buy food and medicine unavailable in Venezuela”.
Our own road to beggary, servitude and continuing poverty, have been cemented over the past eighteen years, by a family regime who have now entrenched themselves upon us as new royalty despite their gross incompetence which appears to be inherent in all hereditary regimes.
The brains of the ULP [Camillo Gonsalves] doesn’t realize that their erratic economic policies only deepens the crisis.
I think this is a great initiative. I hope that the unit will also focus on aspects related to e-commerce, access to credit, mentorship programmes and venture capitalist initiatives. The specific focus on removing the impediments to business growth can only be a good thing.