By Marlon Bute
Imagine what 95 acres could mean in Bequia if carefully planned and made available to hundreds of Vincentians.
Some might build homes. Others might build apartments, small guesthouses, or Airbnbs. A young entrepreneur might set up a shop or another tourism-related business. Vincentians living overseas might invest their savings at home, while young Bequians who increasingly find land beyond their financial reach might finally have an opportunity to own a piece of the island on which they were born.
This is why the discussion surrounding approximately 95 acres at Spring Estate in Bequia should concern us. It raises a much larger question about land ownership, scarcity, and the responsibility of the state to manage one of our most precious and decidedly finite resources.
Bequia is approximately seven square miles, equivalent to about 4,480 acres. Ninety-five acres therefore stand for approximately 2.1 per cent of the entire geographical area of the island. That calculation includes everything, not merely residential or privately owned land.
In the context of a small Grenadine island, 95 acres is quite substantial.
Land is unlike every other economic resource. We can build more houses, businesses, hotels, roads, and schools, but we cannot manufacture another Bequia. We, therefore, have a responsibility to protect our lands from erosion, indiscriminate fires and inappropriate development, while ensuring that adequate areas are still available for agriculture, housing, recreation, commerce, tourism and environmental protection.
We must also confront the question of concentration.
Should any individual, family, company, or foreign investor be able to buy exceptionally substantial portions of our smaller islands without some heightened level of national interest review? Transactions involving 75, 100 or 200 acres should attract more scrutiny. I do not pretend to know where the threshold should be, but surely the conversation is worth having before scarcity makes it academic.
This brings us to Spring Estate.
Storm Gonsalves, son of former prime minister and current Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves, owns approximately 95 acres there.
There is, however, an intriguing piece of history.
Dr Gonsalves has acknowledged that in 2017, while he was prime minister, he signed a letter expressing his government’s interest in buying the property. According to him, the owners responded through their lawyer that they were not interested in selling.
Ordinarily, that might have ended the matter. Government, however, is not an ordinary prospective purchaser.
The state has powers, subject to the Constitution and law, to acquire private property for a legitimate public purpose upon payment of adequate compensation. The Gonsalves administration was familiar with those powers and exercised them.
In 2020, for example, it moved to acquire compulsorily approximately three acres of privately owned Murray family lands at Richmond Hill. Dr Gonsalves publicly defended the intervention as necessary to prevent families living there from becoming homeless.
That precedent makes the Spring Estate question even more compelling. If compulsory acquisition was considered appropriate in the case of the Murray family lands, what happened after the owners of approximately 95 acres in Bequia rejected the government’s offer to purchase?
Was the property valued? Was compulsory acquisition considered? Was the matter discussed by Cabinet? Or did the Government simply decide that it would go no further?
Those questions are not allegations of wrongdoing. They are legitimate questions about the exercise of governmental power and the management of a scarce national resource.
What happened afterwards makes them spectacularly more interesting. The owners who had been unwilling to sell to the Government later sold the property to Storm Gonsalves, whose father was then Prime Minister and had previously expressed the Government’s interest in acquiring it.
Dr Gonsalves has denied that he or his government influenced the process. He has further said that he did not know when his son acquired the lands. There is no need to allege otherwise.
The sequence is nevertheless spectacularly coincidental and calls for public interest, particularly given the quantity of land involved.
Then there is the reported purchase price.
Storm Gonsalves was reported o have paid US$1.5 million, approximately EC$4.05 million, for the 95 acres. That works out to approximately EC$42,600 per acre.
Let us put that into perspective.
Farmland, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and elsewhere, tends to command lower prices than land with significant residential, commercial or tourism potential. Yet farmland in St. Vincent can sell for EC$90,000 or EC$100,000 an acre. At those prices, just 10 acres would cost between EC$900,000 and EC$1 million. Ninety-five acres would amount to between EC$8.55 million and EC$9.5 million.
And this is not farmland.
This is Bequia. This is the Grenadines, in the neighbourhood of Mustique, Canouan, Union Island and some of the most sought-after island real estate in this part of the Caribbean. Land is finite, and the sea, the landscape, the views, and the very geography of the Grenadines can add considerably to the attractiveness of property.
Of course, comparison does not prove what Spring Estate was worth. Only a proper valuation can do that. But it certainly puts the reported purchase price into striking perspective. Approximately EC$42,600 per acre for land on Bequia, when farmland on mainland St. Vincent can sell for EC$90,000 or EC$100,000 per acre, surely calls for examination.
Nor should the fact that part of the property is cliffside be treated as evidence of diminished value. We are speaking about the Grenadines. Cliffs and elevated lands can offer magnificent views across the blue waters of the Caribbean, privacy and natural beauty. What may limit one use may enhance another.
Of quite some interest is the report that no taxes were paid on the sale of the 95 acres. If that is so, the public has a right to know the legal basis upon which that occurred.
Vincentians buying comparatively tiny parcels of land, whether 3,000 or 4,000 square feet, are required to pay the applicable taxes and duties. Against that reality, the absence of taxes on 95 acres is no small matter. Taxes provide resources for roads, schools, health care, infrastructure, and the wider development of the country.
The ULP Government’s decision, however, is now history. The more useful question concerns the NDP administration.
If the former ULP government considered these lands sufficiently important to express an interest in acquiring them, the new NDP government should, with alacrity, revisit that interest.
There is ample precedent.
The NDP administration bought large privately held estates and made land available to Vincentians. In the late 1990s, the state bought Park Estate, approximately 600 acres held by one family. Orange Hill Estate was also bought by the NDP government and the lands made available to farmers, with portions kept by the state for various uses.
The principle is therefore well established. In a small country with finite land resources, the state can lawfully acquire large privately held lands, compensate the owners and put those lands to wider national use.
The NDP government should now have the Spring Estate lands accurately assessed and independently valued and move towards acquisition.
This is not an argument for confiscation, nor should the identity of the present owner determine the decision. The Constitution and the law provide for the acquisition of private property for a legitimate public purpose upon payment of adequate compensation. The test must be the law, fair compensation, sound planning, and the public interest.
Ultimately, the Bequia controversy presents St. Vincent and the Grenadines with a question much larger than one property or one family: how much of our finite land should ever be concentrated in a few hands, and what responsibility does the state have to preserve meaningful opportunities for ordinary Vincentians to own part of their country?
That is a conversation we can no longer afford to postpone.
In the case of these 95 acres, the answer is clear. The state should acquire them.
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