Canouan has potential to be great contributor to economy – PM

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves has called once again on residents of Canouan to address the beach access issue with maturity and a sense of balance.

Speaking on Star Radio on Tuesday, Gonsalves said that investment on Canouan is valued at millions of dollars,{{more}} while the Grenadine island possesses the potential to be a far greater contributor to the economy than Mustique.

“I just want to reiterate there is no way that we have given anybody exclusivity to any beach,” said Gonsalves, who added that there must be balance.

He said that the development involves high end tourism and expensive houses and part of the reason people spend money on these things is not to have large movements of people.

“The problem is this, is that the beaches that are further in the development, you can see the difficulties in terms of the movement of persons. Clearly that is something that does not require any confrontation, that requires discussions between persons who want access to any of the beaches for something to be done in some orderly manner,” said the Prime Minister.

He added, “If you want to have the place as it was, if you want to go in en masse and be riding motorcycle and treat the place as a race track, you can go and do it you know, but the point is this, you going to end up without the investment that creates the jobs, over 1,000 jobs.”

Gonsalves said that the matter has to be dealt with practically, as even on the mainland we were able to adjust to certain things without in any way making ourselves less important.

“We have made adjustments; that is the way in which we have been able to live and we make the adjustments in a mature manner,” said Gonsalves, who added that in the past, he has spent a huge amount of time talking to developers to resolve differences and we can’t now react in a manner to make that investment more problematic.

“What we need is maturity and a sense of balance all around. We have to do everything to protect and support the investment and the investors have to understand that this is a country of laws and they have to take into account of laws and traditions and be sensitive to those things, but we must not with every slight perceived or real, turn the matter into a war zone. That is not doing anybody any good,” Gonsalves said.