Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves built his case against the Companies (Amendment) Bill 2026 on “speculation and speculative utterances”, making sweeping claims about lawyers and foreign companies but had failed to provide evidence to support them, Senator Lavern King has said.
Responding to Gonsalves’ contribution to the debate on the bill in Parliament, King said the changes that the New Democratic Party (NDP) government passed into law give businesses long‑needed breathing room, rolling back strangling provisions that Gonsalves’ government imposed in 2016.
“It is quite evident that the points made by the Leader of the Opposition were not of any substance,” King told Parliament.
“In fact, it was more of speculation and speculative utterances and rhetoric,” she said, adding that the opposition leader, himself a lawyer, had no data or facts about lawyers who are benefiting or were under threat of legal action.
“As usual, the leader of the opposition expects this honourable House to accept his unverified and speculative say‑so. You have to do better than that,” the senator said.
The government presented the bill as a deliberate effort to modernise the business environment, in contrast with what King characterised as the opposition’s failure, while in office, to understand how to create conditions in which the private sector could thrive.
“They do not understand what it means to create an environment for the private sector to thrive.”
King argued that Gonsalves’ objections to the bill betrayed a philosophical divide between the NDP administration and the former Unity Labour Party government, which Gonsalves led.
“It is also evident that the leader of the opposition does not understand what it means to create an environment for the private sector to thrive,” she said.
“During their time, their philosophy was one that was built on competing with the private sector, and that is why he cannot understand the bold ambition of this bill and the spirit in which it is coming here today,” she said, referring to the ULP, which was in office from March 2001 to November 2025.
The senator said the same mindset left St. Vincent and the Grenadines with an “unimaginative and strangling legislative context” that discouraged investment and made the jurisdiction an outlier in the Caribbean for the penalties imposed on companies.
“SVG is one of the only countries that provides this kind of penalties and at this rate,” she said.
“He spoke about reputational harm. The reputational harm that this country has is the unimaginative and strangling legislative context that they have left for the private sector that we are now amending to make it possible for the private sector to thrive.”
Tying the bill to the govt’s wider economic agenda
King located the Companies (Amendment) Bill squarely within the 9‑month‑old government’s broader economic programme, framing it as a fulfilment of campaign promises to remove “structural bottlenecks” to investment and productivity.
“Our manifesto to this country was explicit. We promised to address the structural bottlenecks that hinder investment and productivity,” she said.
“That was not a phrase that was chosen for fluff or to fill a page. In fact, it was a diagnosis and a commitment to treatment. So I rose today, because the Companies Amendment Bill 2026 is that promise being kept.”
King mentioned policies that the government has implemented since coming to office, including regularisation of daily‑paid workers, no new taxes in the budget, mandatory local sub‑contracting by foreign contractors, increases in Public Assistance and jurors’ payments, VAT‑free days, the removal of certain school fees, and moves to create a national development bank.
The senator said these are part of a pattern of decisions designed to ease household burdens and stimulate private initiative.
“We are here with the Companies Act to continue the work that we are doing on behalf of the people,” King said.
She said the bill should be read as another practical step in “opening St. Vincent and the Grenadines to the world”.
She argued that a small state like SVG would grow only “to the extent that the investors, partners, and entrepreneurs who look at this country find in our laws an invitation rather than an obstacle”.
King noted that investors have choices, adding, “St. Vincent and the Grenadines, therefore, needs a legal and regulatory framework that says plainly and without qualification, we are open for business, we are open for partnership, and we are open for investment. This bill is one deliberate and practical step in building that framework”.
‘Government’s job is to clear the legal undergrowth’
King said that the government did not see itself as the direct creator of every job, but as the designer of the environment in which business decisions are made.
“There’s a temptation in this House … to speak as though government is the author of every job and every enterprise, and the reality is that it is not, and we have never on this side claimed that it is,” she told MPs.
“Government does not create every business. Government does not create every job. What government does, as a matter of fact, and what government can do, is create, administer, and reform the legal and regulatory environment within which businesses must operate, and we understand that on this side. We’re a government that believes in the private sector.
“That is our lane, and this bill is government doing exactly what government is for,” she said.
“Not picking winners, not manufacturing prosperity by decree, but clearing the legal undergrowth so that the people who do build businesses, who do create jobs, can do so without tripping over rules that have outlived their purpose”.
Not deregulation, but ‘proportionate’ penalties and realistic timelines
King responded to Gonsalves’ warning that the bill amounted to a dangerous “giveaway” to delinquent external companies and lawyers.
She rejected the idea that the government was recklessly dismantling regulatory safeguards.
“… every obligation that matters — the duty to register, the duty to file, the duty to report … remains firmly in place,” she said.
“What this bill removes is not the regulation itself, but the requirements, timelines, and penalties that this government, after careful review, considers unnecessary, impractical, or simply disproportionate to the conduct they were meant to address.”