Green Party leader calls for breakdown of SVG’s 6.5 % growth

16.NOV.07

EDITOR: In an article appearing in the News Newspaper of November 2, 2007, Minister Thompson made a very weak effort to discredit the Leader of the Opposition’s Independence Message by claiming that he only focused on the negatives.{{more}} But Minister Thompson is making a claim of progress that does not exist. For example, there is more than 100 percent increase in persons being put on the poor relief register, which by definition is a substantial increase in poverty in our country. The ULP regime is taking 15 percent from poor people on VAT and giving them a five percent increase. Somehow this makes sense to Thompson and his colleagues, but they are short changing the poor by ten percent while they drive around in their air conditioned SUVs.

The ULP regime is blaming the high cost of living on imported goods, however, when the ULP regime took office in 2001, the trade deficit was $304 million. In 2006 it had risen to $630 million (source: SVG Stats Dept), and extrapolation shows that by the end of 2007 the SVG trade deficit would be over $700 million. The implication of this is an unstoppable increase in the cost of living and substantial increase in crime. All of this emanated from very poor policies of the ULP regime, in which the SVG economy is getting weaker day by day.

They are forever harping about the stoning of a church, but how does this equate to a serving minister of government who threatened to run over a uniformed police officer with his jeep and disobeyed police orders? He did not even have the good courtesy to apologize to the nation verbally.

Minister Thompson referred to ULP growth rate of 6.5% as being the highest in the OECS. The SVG Green Party is calling on him to give the nation a breakdown of the 6.5% growth and to tell the nation the methodology used to determine growth in SVG.

The incompetent ULP regime uses growth rate as a measure of the strength of SVG economy; the SVG Green Party takes the opposite view. The SVG Green Party sees growth rate as unreliable and misleading in measuring the strength of SVG economy. The ULP leadership consistently talk about high growth rate, but to date has failed to tell us where in the economy the growth is shown.

The ULP leadership will inevitably fail – what is needed for them to show after six years, is an ability to competently manage SVG’s economy. Clearly, they cannot!

SVG Green Party