Very little has been heard about tourism and economic development in Anguilla over the past many months, especially since the change of Government and the need to grapple with a spate of urgent matters. The focus has been, and continues to be, very much so, on the tedious banking situation – and the need to end the more than two years of conservatorship by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank of NBA and CCB. This is of major concern in order to restore confidence in the local banking and financial sector, provide comfort and reassurance to depositors and encourage investment in Anguilla. Surely, a country whose financial business is in dire need of repair, has a very unhappy lot – and every right to cry out for redress to ease the burden on other sectors like tourism, as in the case of Anguilla.
It is only now, with the current observance of Tourism Week 2015, that one is hearing something new other than the banking problem and yet, without this vital industry, which has its own share of problems, Anguilla’s economy would be in greater shambles. The President of the Hotel and Tourism Association, Mr. Delroy Lake, put it squarely in his address at the opening ceremony for Tourism Week when he described tourism as Anguilla’s economic engine, but he also aptly noted that the engine is stalling. “We need to rev this engine and get it going,” he said. “The theme chosen for this week is Transforming Tourism through Partnership and Collaboration. This is certainly the way to get this engine going. Whether we want to believe it or not tourism is everybody’s business.” He went on: “If we can fix the tourism challenges like marketing, air access, customer service, litter, among others, then the tourism engine or the economic engine will trust forward.”
Anguilla is an island which, to borrow an oft-repeated phrase, has “its eggs in one basket”. We cannot afford to drop that basket as “tourism basically has an effect on everyone and everything” in Anguilla, as Mr. Lake argued. All eyes are on the Anguilla Government to do all in its power to ensure the survival and growth of our tourism industry. Chief Minister and Minister of Tourism, Mr. Victor Banks, appears to be very much conscious of this. In his Tourism Week address he said: “We are all aware that tourism is key to our island’s future success. Undoubtedly, we can say that tourism is the most important pillar of Anguilla’s economy. We cannot deny the role that the island’s tourism industry plays in building and securing a solid foundation for Anguilla and Anguillians. Our economy has been built on investment in tourism…It is therefore imperative that we, as Anguillians, truly appreciate the fact that the future of our island is indisputably linked to how we treat our tourism industry.”
There is hardly anything more left for us to say. The message for the success of our tourism-dependent economy is loud and clear, coming from persons both in the know and whose separate or collective influence can fuel the success of the industry. There are, however, a few things perhaps inadvertently omitted. One is the need to control crime in Anguilla. We are seeing an unfortunate upsurge in violent crime and other unsavoury acts of violence. Nothing has a greater negative impact on the growth and success of tourism than unremitting criminal activity. Theft, robberies and burglaries have their toll, but the shootings and murders that have raised their ugly heads in our small and developing island community are gross crimes which must be solved and rooted out. It certainly is a welcome effort that UK metropolitan police officers are currently in Anguilla to help to solve four, murders this, year which have plagued the island and have given us a great deal bad publicity and embarrassment in our tourism marketplace. We wish them well, and hope to see the criminals brought to justice with the cooperation of members of the public having credible information to share with the police in confidence.
Another consideration is the fact that tourism, as related earlier, is a big contributor to our economy. By extension, it is also a means of easing the burden of taxation – not just on other sectors of the economy, but on the citizenry in particular, already scarred by the high cost of living and other related factors. The resolution of the banking sector is expected to be an extremely expensive undertaking. With the coming cost of the “bail out” of the banks, if one may call it so, the people of Anguilla are facing a high and diverse level of taxes from 2016 and beyond, not previously recorded in the history of the island. Such taxes will likely pale in volume and significance to those which were imposed on us by the St. Kitts Government and which were partly responsible for the Anguilla Revolution. Unfortunately, we have nowhere to run or to hide.
Tourism in Anguilla is perhaps being confronted by its most serious challenges in these times and, unless we all put our heads and hands together to rescue and develop this vital industry, our future will be a grave one. If tourism is really the key to our economic development and survival, then we must make sure that such a key is not carelessly thrown away.
