The ULP regime has shown since 2001 that it is hopeless and unable to revive the economy, provide enough jobs, and more importantly, earn revenue from abroad. The country mash up.
The ULP regime’s financial incompetence has weakened our economy, forced many businesses to close and created high unemployment. Both Gonsalveses should resign. The ULP regime’s economic strategy of begging and borrowing has virtually killed our economy.
The price of many locally-grown foodstuff, such as eggs and other agricultural foods, has reduced significantly, but farmers still find it hard to get sales. This fact alone shows that there is practically no money in many households and the SVG economy is virtually dead.
No money is circulating in our country and it is clear that SVG is essentially in a prolonged recession. Like a rudderless ship drifting at sea, our economy and country wonders aimlessly without focus, direction and leadership.
A coals seller recently told the Leader of SVG Green Party, Warrant Officer Ivan O’Neal, BSc (Hons), MSc, MBA, that he can’t sell one sack of coals. He brings them into Kingstown, waits all day and cannot get a sale.
He says he is losing money coming to town, rather than making money, as he has to pay a lorry driver to bring coals to Kingstown and then pay the lorry driver again at the end of the day to take them all back home.
To move SVG forward, SVG needs a new government that has the ability to generate revenue from abroad and get money circulating the country. The ULP regime’s focus on tourism has been a big mistake for 20 years.
They have no idea how to create sustainable revenue and stop the recession in SVG. They should resign and go home – do the whole country a favour!
Singapore’s industrial policy in 1959 sought to promote industrialisation as a way of diversifying its economy by import substitution. In 1968, when the British started to withdraw from Singapore, import substitution was succeeded by a strategy promoting export-oriented, labour-intensive industrialisation.
SVG needs a strategy of import substitution: we should produce locally some of the goods that we import. In the economic sectors that we carry out import substitution, once we have the skills and resources to produce enough for our people, we can then increase production and export to foreign markets.
With an export-orientated economy, we could export tuna fish from our own billion-dollar tuna fishing and canning industry, fresh drinking water, and products from new Green and Science and Technology sectors of our economy.
According to Warrant Officer Ivan O’Neal, BSc (Hons), MSc, MBA, the ULP regime flaps about creating a lot of noise, but they have no end result. It is as if they have no idea what the problem is. Well, in the words of former USA President Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid”.
When Gonsalves first came to office, he compared SVG to Haiti and Bangladesh – food aid countries. Now, SVG is a food aid country. Under the ULP regime, our country has gone down, not up.
SVG needs to earn revenue from abroad and get money circulating in our country. Import substitution and an export-orientated economy are the vehicles to do this. We need a new government.
1 Comment
Yes, the economy is not in a good shape. There is high unemployment, poverty and it seems no economic growth. This has been the case before Covid-19. We need to focus more on agriculture because agriculture is the backbone of the economy, not tourism.
And since the Green Party think that the ULP government is a disaster for SVG. The leader of the Green party should consider joining forces with the opposition groups to remove the ULP government from office at the next general election