Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves has acknowledged that companies owed his government “large sums” despite changes in the Companies Act in 2016 aimed at ensuring compliance with the law.
He, however, criticised the new government’s efforts to collect some of the outstanding funds and give businesses a chance to come into compliance, saying the government was granting an excessive amnesty to delinquent firms and their lawyers.
Debating the Companies (Amendment) Bill 2026 in Parliament, Gonsalves said he did not dispute that substantial arrears had built up over years under the current regime of daily fines and regulatory charges, which came into effect 10 years ago.
The NDP administration has amended the law to cap penalties, replace daily charges with lower monthly fees, and allow companies to settle historic debts at half the amount owed if they do so within six months.
Gonsalves, however, argued that the government’s response amounted to a “giveaway” that favoured those who had ignored the law at the expense of ordinary citizens facing a rising cost of living.
He said the bill was “a bad bill”, contending that it would chiefly benefit “a set of non‑compliant external companies owing several millions of dollars” and “a small subset of lawyers”.
Gonsalves, who became opposition leader in December after his 25-year-old government was voted out of office, accused lawyers, who he did not identify, of collecting fees but failing to complete filings, leaving their foreign clients exposed to mounting penalties.
The opposition leader said the government was not simply introducing proportionality but erasing liabilities that, on his reading, could reach into the millions.
He said that by his calculations, some companies would see total penalties effectively cut by 98–99%, adding that this was arbitrary, unjustified and lacking any serious analytical basis.
Parliament, he said, was being asked to write off vast sums without being given “even the most elementary information” on how many entities were affected, how much was currently recorded as due, or how much government realistically expected to recover.
The opposition leader said that such sweeping relief sent the wrong message about compliance.
He told lawmakers that the message being sent was that those who neglected their obligations long enough could expect to see their debts dramatically reduced by a stroke of the legislative pen.
Gonsalves said the move risked encouraging a “culture of non‑compliance”, particularly among better‑resourced external companies able to absorb legal and administrative delays while penalties quietly accumulated on paper.
Warnings on reputational and regulatory risk
Gonsalves also cast the amendments as dangerous in the context of global efforts to strengthen transparency, beneficial ownership registers and anti‑money‑laundering regimes.
He took aim at the repeal of provisions introduced in 2016 that widened the circumstances under which external companies had to register in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, including where they indirectly held shares in entities with local land interests.
Removing those rules would make it harder for regulators and international partners to trace who ultimately controlled land and corporate assets inside SVG, the opposition leader said.
He said this was taking place at a time when bodies such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) were demanding tighter, not looser, oversight.
Gonsalves cautioned that the combination of lighter penalties, broad amnesty and a narrower definition of which external companies must register could invite uncomfortable questions from international standard‑setters about SVG’s commitment to robust regulation and enforcement.
Friday: ‘We are correcting a draconian law’
However, Prime Minister Godwin Friday rejected Gonsalves’ characterisation, insisting that the bill was not a reckless giveaway but a necessary correction of what he repeatedly called the “draconian” 2016 amendments.
He said amendments that Gonsalves’ government introduced a decade ago had imposed “onerous” and “crippling” penalties that made SVG an outlier in the region and discouraged legitimate investment.
Friday said the core question was whether penalties were designed to generate endless paper claims or to encourage companies to come into compliance and continue operating.
“The act of charging $350 a day every day that you fail to get registered… is extremely high,” he told the Parliament.
He pointed out that penalties could quickly reach levels unrelated to the underlying offence and make companies question whether it was worth staying in the jurisdiction at all.
By moving to a monthly penalty, capped at around EC$10,000, and reducing late‑filing fines to a flat monthly sum with a longer filing window, Friday said the government was bringing SVG’s regime closer to regional norms and making it realistic for companies to put their affairs in order.
On the amnesty, Friday acknowledged that “large sums” were on the books but argued that much of this money was effectively uncollectable under the old system.
Giving companies six months to settle at 50%, he said, was a pragmatic way to recover at least some revenue, clean up the registry and keep businesses afloat, adding, “Half a loaf is better than none.”