Invest SVG on right track after visit to Pro Nicaragua

Following a visit to the investment promotion agency in Nicaragua, Invest SVG is positive that it is on the right path to making St Vincent and the Grenadines a leading destination for investment.{{more}}

During a press conference on April 10, Bernadette Ambrose-Black, the executive director of Invest SVG, outlined the purpose of the visit to Pro Nicaragua, that country’s investment promotion agency (IPA).

Black noted that part of their trip was to continue the company’s thrust towards institutional strengthening and capacity building.

“We believe and support our government’s drive and thrust towards regional integration and harmonization and as such, our visit to Pro Nicaragua was not just to strengthen our capacity and to learn from Pro Nicaragua, but also to collaporate with our regional IPA members,” she said.

The executive director noted that in the globalized world, institutions are constantly looking for ways in which they can be more viable and sustainable. To this end, Black revealed that Invest SVG is working with the idea of creating a regional brand.

It is for that reason that four consultants met with officials at Invest SVG to discuss the possibility of creating “a regional brand not just for tourism but for agro-agencies.”

Black stressed that Invest SVG hopes to make positive strides for the investment sector in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Business facilitations manager Nadine Agard told media officials that the trip to the investment promotion agency in Nicaragua was extremely enlightening.

“They were extremely helpful and very willing to share their information with us and the rest of the IPAS. They were very instrumental in pointing out what they considered best practice, because in a lot of the Caribbean countries that have IPAS, it was demonstrated and pointed out that there is a lot of mission drift,” she explained.

Agard also noted that Invest SVG is in the stage of implementing some of the very same strategies that catapulted Pro Nicaragua to be number one on the global scale, against all other investment promotion agencies.

She noted that these strategies included focusing on marketing the company, while gathering information on the investment climate.

“What you do to push your image to investors around the world, it has to be a very determined, a very focused effort. They focused on targeting of investors, generation of investment and further to that they went into the nitty gritty of capturing these investors, once you’ve generated the fact that you have a target audience,” Agard explained.

“Pro Nicaragua was a very useful experience. It assisted us in recognizing global best practice and implementing it here in St Vincent.”