The views expressed herein are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of One News SVG.
By Luke Browne.
I feel as if there is an intense sense of irony associated with the fact that we are scheduled to sign an agreement for the management and presumably development of our cruise ship facilities with Global Port Holdings (GPH) on the eve of our 47th anniversary of Independence. In other words, we are going to deal a serious blow to our sovereignty and the cause of economic emancipation precisely at a moment when we should be celebrating national freedom.
Based on information in the public domain, the term of the agreement will be around 30 years and there is a possibility that the investment vehicle will have 30% local ownership.
We do not have any clear information on either the level or schedule of investment. The Prime Minister said at the press conference on the signing of the MOU between the government of SVG and GPH earlier this year that GPH will invest a total of $225 million over the 30 years (source: NDP column of 16th June 2025). The Minister of Tourism contradicted him and said that the investment will be $255 million in the period. For good measure of confusion, my colleague in the legal profession Guevara Leacock in A View from The Outside cited an investment level of $250 million. I am calling on the authorities to bring abundant clarity in terms of the absolute amount. We also need clarity on the phases of investment.
The Prime Minister said that in the first phase of the term we will have $75 million in investment whereas his Tourism Minister said it will be $55 million and the government’s external spokesman said it will be $50 million. We see here a clear case where government ministers are not on the same page.
This whole business is complicated by the fact that we know nothing about the number of phases, the length of the phases or indeed the breakdown of the investment across all the phases. This is a legitimate cause for concern. The lack of certainty can render us vulnerable for abuse.
The government has been silent on the question of what revenue would accrue to it under the agreement. This matter looms large in the context of the experience of St. Lucia with the same GPH. Before the St. Lucia agreement, the cruise ship tax was US$5.00 per passenger and the government collected all of it. After the agreement, the cruise ship tax per passenger jumped to US$12.50. However, US$10 of it goes straight to GPH and only US$2.50 of it goes to the government. We have a situation where there is a higher tax (150% increase in tax) but a lower amount of it trickling into the treasury (58.3% fall-off in what the government earned per passenger). In the estimates for 2026, the government provided for the collection of $1.702 million from cruise and charter tax. How will the GPH agreement impact this line item of our national budget over the next 30 years? We need an answer to this question.
The Minister of Tourism must not insult our intelligence by pretending that we forged a partnership with GPH to look out for the interest of local taxi operators and vendors. Indeed, those stakeholders are reporting that they are already being subjected to onerous requirements and uncertainty in anticipation of GPH’s takeover of cruise port operations. At the time of the signing the MOU, the Tourism Minister spoke about clauses to protect existing tenants for a period of at least 3 years. I will like to see these clauses. I will like to examine them against the history of displacement of existing tenants by GPH after it started operations in other countries. The Minister also promised public consultation before the finalisation of the agreement. I have seen no evidence of public consultation on this agreement.
I have also seen insinuations of corruption surrounding GPH’s business affairs in St. Lucia. I would not put great emphasis on this element at this stage. I will give the government the benefit of the doubt on this matter for the time being notwithstanding the signal associated with concerns raised in respect of the recent sale of Chatam Bay.
The Prime Minister made much ado about the fact that we are leasing and not selling the port meaning that we will retain ownership of the asset. He does not understand the importance of sovereignty. I would like to refer him to the wisdom of the wealthiest African American in the USA – Mr. Robert Smith. In a presentation on artificial intelligence, Mr. Smith made a point which stood out to me. He said that in order to have relevance in the agentic world, you must have sovereignty and dominion over data sets and work flows. Crucially, he said that sovereignty and dominion were about the ability to control and use an asset and not necessarily ownership of it. He illustrated the point by saying that companies which don’t own your healthcare data are able to use it to make a profit for themselves.
In relation to the Port, we will have a situation under the upcoming agreement where we own the Port but GPH has sovereignty and dominion over it. GPH would be able to control the use of the asset and the government and the people of SVG will be irrelevant. We are selling out our sovereignty on the eve of our Independence. Our founding fathers must be rolling in their graves.
This matter is not cured by a token 30% local share ownership. The government has been touting this as a victory for Vincentians. We can’t be serious. First of all, who exactly is going to own these shares? Is it the general public? Is it a group of local entities? More importantly, this degree of ownership is not going to give us any ability to influence the direction of the company.
We do of course want to improve our port facilities. The government says that it does not have fiscal space to finance the necessary investment and that GPH was a good partner for this project highlighting St. Lucia as a success story. I have already pointed out that the agreement amounts to a selling out of our sovereignty and may be inimical to the interests of the government from a revenue collection standpoint, taxi drivers, vendors and perhaps the wider economy.
Why didn’t the government pursue the Barbados model? When Barbadians wanted to pursue cruise port development, they set up a company that was wholly owned by local entities in the following shares –
● Cave Shepherd 20%
● Goddard Enterprises 20%
● Port Authority 30%
● General public 30%
This type of approach is not alien to SVG. We took this approach when we set up the ECGC. We could have accommodated GPH within the framework of this approach.
In the Barbados model, the port development company was given a lease for 10 years (and not 30 years) with the option of renewal. After the end of the initial 10-year agreement, the Barbadian public was clamouring for a return of the cruise port to public ownership. Ultimately, the lease was renewed only for a period of 5 years and then the management of the cruise pier reverted completely to the Barbados Port Authority. In light of these facts, I cannot for the life of me understand why the government would like us to think that an agreement for a foreign company to operate our port on the proposed terms for 30 years is a good deal. I venture to say that the GPH agreement is manifestly not in the national interest.
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