(Excerpts of Laverne Velox’s presentation of the NDP’s Five Priorities)
Dr Friday has set our five priorities to deliver real and tangible progress for everyone in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Our priorities for the country are to: create more and better paid jobs, build a better economy that provides opportunity for all, make our country safe again, provide healthcare you can trust and to improve our roads and infrastructure.
Taken together, this presents a real and ambitious platform to make SVG one of the best countries in the Caribbean to live, work, raise a family, grow old and start a business. To deliver this, we need a strong economic model that is sustainable and meets the challenge of a 21st century economy.
The ULP has abdicated any sense of responsibility when it comes to sustained economic management. SVG has lagged behind almost every country in the Eastern Caribbean over the last decade. The ULP has frittered away any platform for growth, there is no focus, no energy, no plan, no hope with the ULP government.
The ULP has ignored the domestic economy. Export growth is either weak or non-existent. There is little if any support for domestic businesses and the government has run out of the few ideas it had to build the economy.
The NDP has been tireless is setting out its plan. We want to build an economy that will deliver more and better paid jobs and greater opportunities for all. The centrepiece of this is our strategy to develop the four pillars of the economy – Tourism, Agriculture, the New Economy and the Blue Economy.
To do this, we need to ensure that each sector has the support needed to grow. This means that we have a targeted export plan to open new markets and grow exports in each sector. We will set up both a National Development Bank and organizations to support businesses in each sector to come together to open up new markets; increase the support for local businesses to grow and develop with targeted supports for each sector; cut unnecessary regulations that stop business growing and developing; set up an innovation campus to drive innovation and skills agencies to better support employers and people and set annual targets for inward investment and report back to the public on progress.
We want to develop a country that becomes one of the shining lights of the Eastern Caribbean. We will take a new approach that builds a strong, thriving economy that combines foreign direct investment and a thriving domestic sector to create better opportunities for all.
Creating More and Better Paid Jobs
(Excerpts of the Honourable Fitz Bramble’s presentation of the NDP’s Five Priorities)
Our country is suffering from a jobs crisis. Too few of our people have jobs, nearly one in five people are unemployed or underemployed. This level of unemployment is one of the highest in the Eastern Caribbean.
Too many of our young people come out of our education system underprepared for the future. Four in ten young people do not have a job. Too many of our young people have to leave our country, have to leave their families behind to find work and opportunities.
Too few people have jobs; leaving our people hopeless and without prospects. The government has promised time and time again it would solve this crisis but has failed to follow through. One in five people do not have a job – this is roughly equivalent to when the ULP came to office. The government response has been to employ young men in low skilled labour. They take young men for granted and hope that people do not notice. Under their watch, our economy has failed to provide the jobs needed to give our people a better quality of life.
We want to build a country of opportunity and hope. A key pillar of hope is knowing that your country will offer you opportunities to grow and develop. Delivering jobs and raising wages will be one of our highest priorities. To achieve this, we will establish the National Jobs and Skills Agency: This is an agency that will act as a one stop shop for business seeking to expand or hire more people. Construct a TVET Centre of Excellence: To give people the skills needed to succeed and expand technical training to ensure that young people have the skills needed to grow. Establish the Jobs Creation Package: This is a series of tax cuts and measures for job creators and business to allow them to create additional jobs. These proposals include: a tax support scheme for any business that hires 5 new and additional people within a year. This scheme will give back a portion of tax to those businesses that do so.
We will also introduce a National Investment Tax Credit: This is a ten-year tax credit for any new business which invest from abroad into SVG and create jobs to benefit from a reduction in the corporate tax rate over a 10-year period. Establish the National Innovation Hub to promote entrepreneurship and new business: We will create a national innovation campus that will give new business a home to build and a platform to build the future. Create the National Youth Guarantee Pledge: Young people will have access to either a job, training programme or job placement. As part of this, we will work with private businesses, to expand by offering incentives for them to take on new workers, including subsidising their wages and with a contribution from the business and create the diaspora investment programme: To create a standalone programme to attract greater number of investments from our diaspora.
The NDP believes that our country needs a Job-Led economic recovery. We want to deliver more jobs, significantly increase wages and sustained economic growth.
