Parliament has approved a new round of changes to the Companies Act that Prime Minister Godwin Friday says will reverse “draconian” amendments made in 2016 and make the country more business-friendly while still protecting the national interest.
Presenting the Companies (Amendment) Bill 2026, the prime minister framed the changes as a corrective step to undo the unintended damage of the 2016 reform package.
The 2016 amendment, passed under the then-Unity Labour Party administration, imposed crippling penalties and burdens on both local and external companies, particularly foreign firms seeking to invest in or own land in the country, Friday said.
He said the Ralph Gonsalves government brought the law to Parliament with “little or no consultation with industry practitioners”.
Some terms of that amendment were repealed when Parliament approved the law in August, without opposition support.
Friday argued that while the original intent of the 2016 law may have been to tighten regulation and address perceived abuses, the net effect was to “inflict” onerous conditions on legitimate businesses, driving investors away and making SVG uncompetitive both regionally and internationally.
‘We are open for business’
The prime minister cast the amendments as part of a wider strategy to use private capital — both domestic and foreign — to help the country grow out of its debt burden and expand economic opportunity.
The government has said that the EC$3.5 million public debt is 113% of GDP and that 40 cents of every dollar the government receives goes to financing the debt.
The prime minister said government finances were constrained and that the state could no longer be the primary engine of growth.
Instead, policy must “liberate private capital” and “create an enabling environment” for doing business in SVG.
“We are committed to stimulating growth in the private sector because it is only through growth in the productive sectors that we can really accelerate the development of our economy, grow our way out of the debt situation that we are in currently, and… provide opportunities for our people,” Friday told Parliament.
“The private sector is the engine of growth, not government,” he added, insisting that his administration is “not here to compete against the private sector, whether it’s domestic or foreign”, and does not “begrudge anybody making money because if they don’t make money, they won’t invest”.
Linking the bill to the government’s stated message on his official visit to Taiwan in August, the prime minister reiterated that “we are open for business”.
He said the legislative changes were intended to send a consistent signal — both at home and abroad — that SVG welcomes credible investors, including external companies that wish to own land or operate locally.
Removing ‘crippling’ and ‘onerous’ penalties
Central to the prime minister’s case was that the 2016 amendments had created a tangle of obligations and penalties that went well beyond what was reasonable or competitive.
One of the most contentious provisions, he said, required that not only the external company owning land register in SVG, but “every shareholder of that company that is a company also had to register here as an external company”.
This was the requirement of the 2016 law , even if that shareholder entity had no real business activity in SVG beyond an indirect ownership chain.
By deleting the relevant section, Friday said the new bill “removes red tape,” cuts administrative burdens, and makes external companies a more attractive vehicle for property ownership and investment.
He argued that in practice, the 2016 rules had led lawyers and advisers to stop recommending company structures and instead encourage foreigners to hold land in their personal names, limiting the use of corporate vehicles and undermining the jurisdiction’s competitiveness.
More starkly, Friday said the 2016 regime had imposed “onerous fees” that no other Caribbean jurisdiction charged, especially on foreign companies that failed to register in time or to update fundamental changes.
Under Section 348 of the principal Act, an unregistered foreign company doing business in SVG faced a fine of EC$350 per day for failing to register — an approach he described as effectively “outside the pale”.
“The act of charging $350 a day every day that you fail to get registered… is extremely high,” Friday said.
He told lawmakers that companies could quickly accrue “very, very high” sums “not through malice” but because of tardiness, poor advice or administrative delays.
In such cases, the penalties could reach levels that made investors question whether it was worth operating in the jurisdiction at all, the prime minister said.
The new bill replaces that structure with a penalty of EC$ 135 per month, capped at roughly EC$27,000, which Friday said was “reasonable” and more likely to encourage registration and compliance rather than drive companies away.
Similarly, the daily EC$100 penalty for late filing of “fundamental changes” –such as name changes, corporate instruments, objects, or directors — was slated to be replaced by EC$50 per month, alongside an extended filing window from 30 to 60 days to reflect the reality of cross-border filings and certifications.
The prime minister repeatedly framed the question behind penalties as whether they exist to “make money, or… encourage compliance”, insisting that the new structure was intended to achieve the latter.
Amnesties, cabinet discretion and a level playing field
Friday also cast the bill’s partial amnesty provisions as a deliberate move to take discretionary waivers out of Cabinet’s hands and replace them with a transparent, time-limited framework open to all qualifying companies.
Clause 7 of the bill introduces a six‑month amnesty under which local and external companies with accumulated fees and penalties from late filing of annual returns or fundamental changes can regularise their status by paying 50% of the outstanding sums.
Payment within the window would be treated as full settlement, while those who ignore the opportunity would remain liable for 100% and would find it “very difficult” to seek relief later.
Friday said this approach would help hundreds of companies that had fallen behind for a variety of reasons — sometimes over “tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars” in accumulated charges — return to compliance, continue operating and contribute to the economy.
He linked the amnesty to a broader shift away from case-by-case political discretion by the Cabinet, warning that companies that ignore the amnesty should not expect Cabinet to intervene later.
The prime minister argued that the amnesty would also bring in revenue that government would otherwise be unlikely to collect in full, saying “half a loaf is better than none”.
At the same time, the change in the law will free companies from debilitating liabilities and leave them better placed to invest, employ and act as “good corporate citizens” in their communities.
‘No hostility’ to companies, but protection of SVG’s interests
Friday said that the amendment does not mean a regulatory free‑for‑all, nor hostility towards the rule of law, framing the changes as pro‑business but not anti‑regulation.
“This is really… the environment in which we’re creating. There’s no hostility. There’s no seeking to be punitive. What we are wanting to do, we want business to do business. We want the country to free up. We want people to feel the country light again,” he said.
At the same time, he repeatedly insisted that the government’s responsibility to “protect the interests of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as a destination to do business” would remain, with enforcement mechanisms “vigilant” even as the investment climate is made more attractive.
The balance, he suggested, lay in ensuring that businesses can make a fair profit and see the risk as worth taking, while the state secures tax revenues, jobs and wider economic benefits — using regulation to enable activity rather than smother it.
Opposition Leader: ‘A bad bill’ and a giveaway to non‑compliant companies
Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves strongly rejected the legislation, describing it as “a bad bill”.
He accused the government of giving away revenue and weakening safeguards in favour of non‑compliant external companies and a subset of lawyers who, he alleged, had failed to perform their duties for foreign clients properly.
Gonsalves, a lawyer, said the measure would disproportionately benefit “a set of non‑compliant external companies owing several millions of dollars” and some local attorneys who had collected fees but did not complete company filings, and warned that the scale and structure of the fee reductions — up to 98–99% in some cases by his calculation — were arbitrary, illogical and dangerous.