NDP does not like investment ,says Camillo

Unity Labour Party candidate for East St George, Camillo Gonsalves, said that the Unity Labour Party (ULP) administration has a pro-investment approach while the New Democratic Party (NDP) has “a misguided view” which advocates for capping investment in the country.

Gonsalves, who has been serving as Minister of Finance and Economic Development, made the comparison at the official opening of the Everything Vincy Expo at Diamond where he pointed out that Invest SVG has facilitated major investments, including the US$500 million Beaches Resort project at Mt. Wynne, which is expected to create 2000 jobs.

“We believe that attracting quality investments that create jobs, opportunity, and wealth is the most powerful development engine available to us,” Gonsalves said, while noting that every major investment- from Sandals to Holiday Inn Express- is carefully designed to ensure that Vincentians benefit directly.

He said the government’s investment policy requires major investors to source goods and services locally whenever possible, ensuring that Vincentian farmers, fishers, and artisans benefit from tourism and commercial growth.

Gonsalves said as well that in this political season, there are people who wish to cap investment in SVG.

“Representative of the opposition party said, all of this investment in St Vincent and the Grenadines is a bad thing, and if left to them, they would put a cap on the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI), and the amount of investment that would take place in St Vincent and the Grenadines.”

He said the NDP wants to stop the amount of FDI because it creates wealth, and if too many businesses grow, it would make their role, “as a politician, as a dispenser of gifts, as a dispenser of largesse, less important, because if somebody wanted something, they wouldn’t come to mister representative in his constituency office, they might go to Sandals, or they might go to FLOW, or they might go to LIME.

“I’ve never heard a more cock-eyed view of what investment should be and could be in St Vincent and the Grenadines, in this small island developing state,” Gonsalves scoffed.

He stressed the ULP administration has determined that the attraction of quality investments for quality projects in the interest of the people of SVG is one of the largest and strongest and most powerful developmental engines that can be harnessed to take SVG from where it is today to the planned destination of a nation of a first world quality by the year 2040.

“We have sought, using Invest SVG as the tip of our spear to seek out, to target, to solicit, to attract investments of the highest quality that create jobs, that create opportunity and create wealth for Vincentians,” Gonsalves said.

He added, “…it is a point of contrast that we have to make over and over, that there’s one entity, one purported political party in this country who does not see investment, and they might be the only one in the western world, that does not see investment as a valuable injection into the developmental matrix…all of the things that you need to put together to make a country advance”.