During a Thursday parliamentary sitting in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, opposition senator Carlos James formally lent his full support to landmark legislation that codifies the island nation’s full membership in the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), while delivering a series of targeted, evidence-based warnings to the 11-month-old New Democratic Party (NDP) administration over its framing of the multilateral lender’s financing terms, fiscal stewardship, and unfulfilled campaign pledges. Speaking as the opposition’s lead representative on the bill in the absence of Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves, James emphasized that he had no intention of obstructing the membership process or discrediting CAF’s long track record of regional development support, but framed his intervention as a core part of the opposition’s constitutional duty to safeguard public finances. A former North Leeward Member of Parliament who served one five-year term before being unseated in last November’s general election, James first pushed back against Prime Minister Godwin Friday’s public characterization of CAF funding as concessionary, noting that the bank’s loan products are tied to the secured overnight financing rate (SOFR) – a variable market benchmark that stood at roughly 4.2% at the time of his address. After accounting for CAF’s administrative fees and mandatory spreads, he calculated that SVG’s effective borrowing cost would land at approximately 5.5% or higher, well above the country’s long-standing debt management target of keeping all public borrowing rates below 5% outside of emergency contexts, with 2023-2024 average CAF loan rates hovering at 6% or more. James further clarified that the full membership trajectory was not initiated by the current NDP government, but traced back three years to the previous Unity Labour Party (ULP) administration, pointing to a November 2, 2023 letter from CAF’s executive president to then-Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves confirming a formal letter of interest submitted that September, alongside earlier exploratory discussions at a 2023 World Bank and IMF spring meeting focused on expanding CAF’s Caribbean footprint. He framed the cross-administration effort as a demonstration of “government of continuity” that the new NDP administration was building on. Under the terms of the membership, an initial US$2 million share subscription will unlock an estimated US$8 million total borrowing envelope for SVG, and James urged the administration to strictly earmark all drawn funds for high-impact, revenue-generating development projects with positive net present value, explicitly warning against diverting the CAF resources to cover public sector salaries, general budget support, or other recurrent expenditures that would not deliver long-term economic returns to ordinary Vincentian households. He acknowledged CAF’s unique value propositions, including its technical cooperation programs, regional partnership frameworks, targeted climate adaptation and disaster risk financing streams (noting the bank had already delivered grants and rapid emergency support to SVG in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl), and far faster disbursement timelines of 3 to 4 months, outpacing many traditional multilateral lenders. Beyond the CAF debate, James launched a broader critique of the NDP’s 11-month tenure, arguing that the administration had failed to deliver on high-profile campaign promises, including pledges that household living standards would improve immediately after election day, that relief funds would target communities facing the greatest cost-of-living pressures, and that the electricity fuel surcharge would never exceed base consumption fees. He noted that ordinary Vincentians were still grappling with persistent elevated household costs and steep energy bills, with existing government subsidies proving insufficient to ease the burden, while the administration had yet to roll out a coherent, clearly communicated national development strategy to stimulate economic growth and replenish depleted public revenues. In response, government ministers pushed back sharply against James’s assessment of the NDP’s inherited fiscal position: Foreign Affairs Minister Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble revealed the incoming administration had discovered an unauthorized public sector overdraft exceeding EC$200 million, far above the legal EC$85 million limit, alongside a backlog of unpaid invoices owed to local small businesses. Prime Minister Friday later added that SVG’s total national debt stood at roughly EC$3.6 billion, equivalent to 113% of the country’s gross domestic product, with crippling debt servicing costs severely constraining the government’s ability to fund core public services. James and former ULP minister Senator Keisal Peters countered that the elevated debt stock was accumulated to fund life-saving emergency support for Vincentian households through overlapping national crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 La Soufrière volcanic eruption, and the catastrophic impacts of Hurricane Beryl, rather than wasteful public spending.
NDP’s promises yet to match Vincies’ economic reality – James (+video)
