SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico April 24 – 26—Anguilla’s Parliamentary Secretary, Hon. Haydn Hughes and Trade and Investment Officer in the Ministry of Finance, Mr. Perin Bradley recently traveled to Puerto Rico for the 16th annual Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference. Hon. Hughes has made a name for himself around the region, was asked at the last moment to fill in for Hon. Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace on the panel discussing ‘Opportunities in the Caribbean Industry – Public and Private sector Partnerships’ which was moderated by Mr. Gary Brough of KPMG TCI.
The panel also included Hon. Ricky Skerritt, minister of tourism and international transport for the government of St. Kitts and Nevis, a two-island state in the West Indies, Hon. Karine Roy-Camille, president of the Martinique Council of Tourism, Mr. MartynBould, chairman of global property and construction firm Rider Levett Bucknall in the Caribbean and Mr. Josef Forstmayr, president of the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association and managing director of Round Hill Resort Management.
Government officials in the Caribbean are under tremendous pressure to grow the economy, said Hon. Haydn Hughes, parliamentary secretary for tourism forAnguilla. And it cannot be done alone, he added.
The importance of public-private partnerships is greater now than ever before because Caribbean governments do not have money, Hughes said. “Private groups do have that money, but they are holding on to their dollars.”
Chinese investment
There are several public institutions inChinawilling and interested in investing in Caribbean projects, according to MartynBould, who recently met with lenders in Beijing.
The Export-Import Bank of China and the China Development Bank, both government banks, have sources of funds for infrastructure projects; there also are private lenders in the region that have similar amounts of funds available, he said.
The funds that are available in the region are significant, Bould said, but not many investors are being approached for capital.
One of the key issues involved with deciding to work with Chinese investors in the Caribbean, however, is the employment of Chinese contractors.
“Chinese investment means Chinese workers,” Hughes said. There is a very high unemployment rate in the region, so developers need to balance between what they need from China and the needs of the Caribbean workers.
Caribbean workers would remain unemployed, watching from the sidelines as 8,000 Chinese workers complete a project, Hughes said. “This is one of the challenges we have with the public-private partnership with China.”
“Things are really working, and we do work all together now. We have no other alternative than working together,” Roy-Camille said.
InAnguilla, the government also is stepping in to provide incentives for hoteliers to keep buildings revitalized, according to Hughes.
Before 2008, hoteliers could get away with commanding higher rates in hotels that were physically declining, Hughes said. Once the downturn hit, consumers started demanding better value for their dollars.
As the economy of Anguilla is completely dependent on tourism, the government now provides tax incentives to every hotel undergoing renovations, Hughes said.
Challenges remain
Inter-regional travel has become more time-consuming and expensive within theCaribbean, Hughes said. “This is something we need to put into action and stop just talking about it.”
“There’s a fallacy that adding taxes to a ticket isn’t going to hurt anyone,” Forstmayr said. The public and private sectors need to unite to lower those taxes, he said, allowing tourists to arrive to their destinations as cheaply as possible and spend as much as possible in the Caribbean.
This year, the CHTA celebrated 50 years having been initiated in 1962.
– Press Release
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
