The failed Buccament holiday resort in St Vincent was built on too many false assumptions. The recent layoff of workers at the Buccament site is a clear indication of things to come at Buccament, namely haphazard employment upon which no worker can rely or plan. No one is able to gain long-term financial stability on jobs at any Buccament resort. Surely it’s time to give the land back to the Buccament farmers and people that were displaced.

It is immoral for the manager of the Buccament resort to try and blackmail the people of SVG by saying the Argyle airport is necessary to complement the Buccament resort. The bottom line is that the location of the resort is incompatible for a high price destination such as SVG.

The ULP regime has had 17 years in opposition and 7 years in office, yet they remain completely oblivious of strategy and ability to build a strong SVG economy. PM Gonsalves, in his 2007 Budget Address, said agriculture shows a negative output for 3 years consecutively.  The ULP regime is unable to manage the massive decline in our economy. Gonsalves just begs and borrows as a way to try to manage the SVG economy. However, begging and borrowing are not sustainable.

The SVG economy is going from bad to worse under the incompetent ULP regime. The ULP regime has bought us VAT, high taxes, high unemployment, highest ever murder rate, more poverty, few jobs, an increase in violent sex crimes and caused businesses profits to drop by up to 60%.

According to the World Bank, ‘7 Caribbean countries are among the 10 most indebted countries in the world, and 14 are among the top 30’. What do most of them have in common? An economy based on mass tourism. The economically competent SVG Green Party wish to reiterate that mass tourism could never build a strong SVG economy. It would only damage our economy. There should be selective tourism in the Grenadines, but no mass tourism on mainland St Vincent, as St Vincent is not suitable for mass tourism for a number of reasons.

Barbados government’s total guaranteed debt has doubled over the past two years, increasing from $630 million in 2004 to over $1.2 Billion at the end of 2006. This illustrates that mass tourism does not work. Mass tourism suffers from a high leakage of money to foreign countries and provides only low-income, seasonal employment to local people. Mass tourism offers a false sense of sustainable development.

According to the World Bank, enrolment in tertiary (university) education in the Caribbean has been historically low, and would appear to be an obstacle to achieving the goal of a knowledge driven economy. This shows that SVG Green Party’s policy of a university for all the children of SVG is correct.

The only solution to build a strong SVG economy is an SVG Green Party government.  SVG Green Party has the ideas and expertise to implement industries and technologies to create thousands of jobs and build a strong SVG economy.