‘Drip-drip’ investment from diaspora can help boost SVG’s economy — Bramble

St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) must mobilise its diaspora and rethink its investment approach if it is to escape a mounting debt burden highlighted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Foreign Affairs and Foreign Investment Minister Fitzgerald Bramble has warned.

Addressing Vincentians and friends of SVG at an Invest SVG diaspora outreach in Toronto on Saturday, Bramble said the recent IMF mission “revealed our realities” and underscored the urgency of changing how the country grows its economy.

“Our debt-to-GDP ratio is 113 and rising, meaning for every dollar that our country earns, we have to find $1.13 to pay back the debt. That is our reality,” said Bramble, an economist who is in his second term as MP for East Kingstown.

Bramble said the IMF has told Kingstown that modest growth will barely dent the country’s indebtedness.

“They told us that if we only experience 1% growth over the next five years, we will only be able to reduce our national debt by six percentage points,” he said.

“The IMF is saying to us, ‘Look, for you to make any meaningful dent in your debt burden, you have to go more than 2.5–2.7, at least 3% [growth] over the next five years.’”

Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Godwin Friday has said that the public debt of St. Vincent and the Grenadines stood at EC$3.5 billion as of Dec. 31 2025, as the former Unity Labour Party government spent money “like a drunken sailor” ahead of the Nov. 27 general election.

The IMF said in April that without a decisive change in policies, public debt is set to continue to rise, propelling the debt ratio to 145% of GDP by 2031, and gross financing needs to 26% of GDP, even as the high risk of debt distress calls for urgent fiscal consolidation.

Bramble presented the IMF’s diagnosis as a “rude awakening”, but insisted that the government would not simply implement a standard IMF prescription.

“They have also prescribed what they consider to be some possible solutions to our problems,” Bramble said.

“But our Prime Minister [Godwin] Friday, and our government, we’ve made it very clear to the IMF that this is going to be our own home‑grown approach to how we fix this problem.”

‘How are you going to grow if you’re not investing?’

Bramble linked the IMF’s growth targets directly to investment, arguing that SVG cannot meet them without significantly increasing capital flows into productive sectors.

“How are you going to grow if you’re not investing?” he said. “How are you going to expand your economy if you don’t have a commensurate or an even larger level of investment?”

The minister, whose portfolio also includes foreign trade and diaspora affairs, criticised what he described as a narrow, outdated understanding of investment in the country.

“Unfortunately, we have limited our … concept of investment to be some people from North America, from Europe, coming with some tonne loads of money to build a hotel or to build something here,” he said.

While welcoming large foreign projects, Bramble argued they cannot be the sole or even primary strategy for growth.

“Yeah, that’s an important part of investment,” he said. “But there’s the drip‑drip effect type of investment as well.”

The ‘drip-drip’ effect: many small investors, big cumulative impact

Bramble used the Toronto meeting to speak directly to diaspora Vincentians and to spell out what he meant by the “drip‑drip” model.

“If we have 10 Vincentians coming home and investing $50,000 Canadian each, just think about the impact that that can have — the cumulative impact that that can have,” he said.

He said similar efforts across North America, Europe and elsewhere could collectively change the country’s economic trajectory.

“If we have similar initiatives or similar ventures from across the diaspora — North America, Europe, Asia — it would make a huge difference, a huge difference,” he said.

Bramble urged diaspora members not to dismiss their own capacity to contribute.

“Don’t, for one moment, think that, ‘Oh, my little idea, my little $200 a month for my 401(k)… that ain’t going to make any difference.’ That’s not true,” he said.

He illustrated the point with a personal story about his mother, Mona Bramble — who died one week ago — built a modest but impactful business selling tamarind balls.

“She started out putting four tamarind balls in a little plastic bag and tying it. Then she graduated to where she got the sealer… then to labelling,” the minister said.

“She did quite well with her little business. She helped all kinds of people,” he said, adding that at one point she dipped into her “tamarind ball money” to buy him a goalkeeper’s gloves when he represented SVG in Trinidad.

From that experience, he drew a lesson for the diaspora:

“Your little $200 a month, your little $50 a month could go a long way in helping to develop micro and small businesses — whether it’s yours, whether you want to partner with somebody back home,” Bramble said.

“It makes a huge, huge difference,” he told the forum.