The Joint Ministerial Council meeting, attended by Government officials from Anguilla, other Overseas Territories and the United Kingdom, was held at Church House in London on November 26. The meeting, the second so far, “focussed on action to support economic diversification, jobs and economic growth” in the territories, according to the immediate communiqué. The statement listed various ways in which the UK and its territories will work together. These include capacity-building, technical assistance and renewable energy financing – as well as the promotion and development of the offshore financial services industry.
An area of need, of much interest to Anguilla, is the UK Government’s promise of “promoting the development of, and investment in, sustainable fishing industries, particularly in Territories where potential resources are underutilised or illegally exploited.” In the meantime, it was reported that Anguilla’s Chief Minister, the Honourable Hubert Hughes, raised concerns on the G8 agenda and repeated calls for a level playing field in relation to the future of financial services in Anguilla and the other Overseas Territories. This was all well and good and the hope is that his arguments – whatever they were – were well taken and will be acted on.
It is unfortunate that, as no reference was made to the matter,that the opportunity appears not to have been taken by the Chief Minister to express a strong need for assistance with the protection and development of Anguilla’s flagging fishing industry. This is one of the island’s crying needs on which economic diversification can be successfully concentrated. It is a need where fishing, on which so many people in Anguilla depend, can be developed to a point at which our tables can be adequately and delightfully served with choice pelagic fish; where there can be a processing plant to export excess catches in various forms, rather than allowing our fishing banks to be freely and selfishly exploited by foreign trawler-operated fishermen probably as far away as Japan and Taiwan. The possibility exists that we can find ourselves, if we have not already begun to do so, purchasing and consuming the very fish taken from our waters and then exported to the Caribbean region in tins.
When we talk about our fishing banks, we speak in reference to a fishing zone of over 200 miles to the north. Local fishermen, venturing to some extent in that area, in small open boats, have reported seeing foreign fishing trawlers operating there. Some ofthesedaring master fishermen have brought back giant wahoo, dolphin, tuna and other deep-sea pelagic species that surprise us to know that they abound in our waters.
Unfortunately, Anguillian fishermen have been unable to join together to establish fishing cooperatives, and to secure even one trawler to enable them to safely navigate our rich fishing banks and to remain there for some days to fill their freezing containers. The Government has obviously not been helpful – not that it does not care, but in fact needs help to do so in the absence of private sector investment. It is perhaps here where the UK Government can come in to encourage investors – UK developers or other agencies from outside, such as the European Union or the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries Secretariat – to lend a helping hand to its precious but needy territories.
There are several examples where those agencies and other public/private partnerships have been involved in the development of fisheries in other countries except Anguilla and the rest of the Overseas Territories.There has been what is known as the ACP Fish 11 Programme, a 30-million dollar project funded by the European Union through the EDF. For four-and-a-half years the programme has been focussed on strengthening fisheries development and, improving food security aimed at alleviating poverty in 76 ACP States. These include 15 in the Caribbean with the exception, of course, of Anguilla and the other Overseas Territories.Ironically, the programme is now coming to a close around the same time that the UK Government is speaking about fisheries development in its territories. The question is: Is it possible that Anguilla and the other OTs can be accommodated on any upcoming similar programme?
All that is now left to hope for is that the just-concluded Joint Ministerial Council (JMC), and the commitments made, will eventually produce some good results for Anguilla and the other Overseas Territories. They really need some good assistance with their sustainable economic development in a variety of important ways.
