Is St Lucia really broke? Explained

Tuesday, 20th October 2020

Recently, Prime Minister of St Lucia Allen Chastanet rounded himself with controversy about his statement on a national broadcast, where he said that “St Lucia is broke” (financially) and the nation does not have enough resources to counter the spread of COVID-19. Later realising the situation as worse, PM made another statement clarifying his previous declaration as he did not mean that country is broke. Instead, he said that “If St Lucians do not continue to observe COVID-19 safety protocols the Government will not be able to again finance the rift of Programmes it implemented before”. But, the real questions is that is St Lucia really broke? Or St Lucia is out of resources to run its public benefit programmes? The direct answer is yes. Let’s see it in depth; most of the Caribbean nations along with St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda highly rely upon revenues from Citizenship by Investment Programmes, which have now become the sole bread earner of these countries during the unprecedented COVID-19 economic crisis. The Caribbean island nations mainly rely upon tourism. In contrast, the tourism sector saw a complete shutdown in the first two quarters of the year 2020. These countries are now emphasising on improving their Citizenship by Investment Programmes to generate foreign direct investment. Financial and Social effects of coronavirus are still looming around some governments as cash crunch is going to be a significant issue for all the nations in the world. Countries like Commonwealth of Dominica and St Kitts and Nevis very well managed the cash crunch of the economy only because of CBI Programmes. Both nations successfully managed to provide stimulus packages to restore the downfall of the economy, not only that Commonwealth of Dominica is now successfully providing free climate-resilient houses to the hurricane-affected people of the nation (which is entirely being funded by the Citizenship by Investment Programme.) While Dominica and St Kitts and Nevis are both awarded for the best CBI programmes in the world by CBI Index of PWM Magazine published by Financial Times, St Lucia is still suffering to overcome the financial obstacles due to bad management of CBI Programmes they offer. How St Lucia lost the COVID-19 battle by still having CBIP? Let’s start from the beginning, in St Lucia around four years ago Allen Chastanet took over the government by winning the elections and ripped off St Lucia Citizenship by Investment Programme’s marketing from private running organisation CS Global Partners and government took over the charge of marketing as well. However, the administration of PM Chastanet drastically failed to uplift the programme and lost more than 70% of the clients for Citizenship. The downfall was so steep that Citizenship by Investment Programme now plays little role in the national revenue as compared to other resources. PM in his recent statement told Jamaica Observer, “What I don’t want is for us to close down the country, and the point I made was, if we have to close down the country, we don’t have the money to redo all the things that we did the first time.” Not only the previous statement was controversial, but this time PM’s clarification took over more public outburst than the previous. A resident of Castries South in St Lucia pointed out at Prime Minister and said, “We all know how government offices work, and they shifted the operations of CBIP from a company generating hefty revenues for the government. Why do they tell us now that the government is out of money? Whom do we blame? The government or particularly our Prime Minister Allen Chastanet.” Another resident of Laborie, Eric Mason, gave an example of neighbouring nations, “Our sister nations are providing programmes which not only help the families, but it also raises standards of the nation on international stages. Dominica is currently building more than 5000 climate-resilient houses, that too for free and what St Lucia government is doing for the people is nothing.” People are highly disappointed with the actions of the St Lucia government and their continuous ignorance to the external revenue sources. The avoidance has shown the government’s lack of support to assist people during the lockdowns resulted by coronavirus pandemic. The situation might become very crucial as St Lucia will go into the General Elections very soon.