标签： Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

A missing Dominican-registered light aircraft that disappeared en route from St. Vincent and the Grenadines to Tobago earlier this month has been located, with no fatalities or crash having occurred, according to the country’s top security official. But St. Clair Leacock, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Security, has urged the public to remain patient as investigators navigate what he calls a highly sensitive ongoing security operation, limiting what details can be released publicly.

The incident unfolded on June 12, when a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron B58T, registered HI1145, departed Argyle International Airport at 11:52 a.m. local time, bound for Tobago’s A.N.R. Robinson International Airport. Two people were on board, and the flight was scheduled to take just one hour and five minutes. Civil aviation authorities confirmed that the aircraft maintained normal radio communication with Argyle air traffic control until it reached a point 40 nautical miles south of the airport, the southern boundary of St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ controlled airspace. After communication was handed off to the next air traffic control jurisdiction, contact with the plane was lost, and it never arrived at its destination.

The loss of contact triggered an immediate alert and the activation of a formal distress phase, with search and rescue operations launched shortly after. In a public statement, the Ministry of Tourism, Civil Aviation and Sustainable Development confirmed it remained committed to upholding safe and secure flight operations within the country’s airspace, and pledged to share new updates as they become available.

Speaking on the ruling New Democratic Party’s weekly radio programme “New Times” on NICE Radio this Monday, Leacock shared the first official confirmation that the missing aircraft has been located. Drawing on information provided by regional and international security partners, the minister confirmed the plane had not crashed, and no lives have been lost. He emphasized that the situation remains an extremely delicate security matter, and that strict operational confidentiality constraints limit what he can disclose to the public.

Leacock told listeners he has been in constant contact with St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Police Commissioner as well as regional security agencies since contact with the plane was lost on Sunday. “I have been very guarded in what I say,” he noted, adding that the investigation remains at a stage where specific details of the outcome cannot be released publicly. “To the best of my knowledge, the aircraft has not crashed and there had not been a loss of life, and international, regional, and national agencies are following developments very closely. Aircraft don’t fly themselves — there are people operating that aircraft, so agencies are working to determine the appropriate course of action,” Leacock said.

Leacock acknowledged that the public’s desire for more details is understandable, but said his office must balance the public’s right to transparency with critical operational security requirements. “I, out of professional duties and responsibilities, cannot at this time provide the public with more details as to what is happening in this very delicate security matter,” he said.

This is not the first such unexplained aircraft incident in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in recent years, Leacock confirmed. In December 2023, a 21-seat Gulfstream aircraft departed the island of Canouan for a scheduled sightseeing trip, with three passengers and one pilot on board. The plane was expected to return to Canouan two hours after departure, but all contact was lost just six minutes after takeoff. The aircraft was eventually located thousands of miles away in Africa months later. Then-prime minister Ralph Gonsalves reported at the time that intelligence from regional and international partners suggested the plane’s transponder had been intentionally turned off, and Vincentian authorities were in contact with relevant Latin American governments over the case.

Responding to a caller on the radio programme who pressed for more details and public reassurance, Leacock reiterated that he is barred from sharing additional specifics, but confirmed that relevant security agencies already have full knowledge of the aircraft’s current location, flight history, and the identities of the people on board. “I can tell you that no lives are lost. The international agencies know where the plane is. The regional agencies — the CARICOM IMPACS, regional security system — our own police force know where the plane is, they have names, they know the flight history… but they are still in the middle of an active operation, and speaking prematurely would compromise the quality of the work that’s taking place,” Leacock said. “Those who would like me to speak in more specific terms have to understand that sometimes for the Minister of National Security, less said is better,” he added.

Leacock also addressed growing criticism of his handling of the case on social media, where he said users have resorted to personal attacks and name-calling. “I see people on social media call me by all kind of bad word names, and so forth, but sometimes I still got to keep a wise head,” he said. He warned that disclosing sensitive details prematurely could put both the ongoing operation and personal safety at risk, noting “I have to look at my own safety and welfare and well-being, and others as well.”

One caller raised broader institutional questions, arguing that two unexplained aircraft disappearance incidents in just a few years demonstrate that civil aviation oversight should be moved from the Ministry of Tourism, where it currently sits, to the Ministry of National Security, given the clear national security implications of these events. Leacock responded that the assignment of ministerial portfolios is ultimately a decision for the prime minister, and the arrangement is not as clear-cut as critics suggest. “Civil aviation can have a relationship too with tourism, because it’s dealing with airports, dealing with aeroplanes, dealing with pilots… It can logically be placed there. But in the same breath, airports fall under infrastructure alongside seaports, and wherever you have aviation and airport travel, there’s a huge element of security… So it could also fall under national security,” Leacock explained. He stressed that even though civil aviation does not formally fall under his portfolio, national security agencies have played a central role in the response to this incident from the start. “It is not fixed and cast in stone… It is now not under national security, but that doesn’t mean that national security doesn’t have an interest,” he said.

Leacock also connected the current response to broader regional security cooperation efforts he has participated in recently, noting that during recent meetings in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, he received briefings on joint regional systems designed to track both air and maritime movements across the Caribbean. He noted that as the U.S. government has reduced its maritime patrol presence in the region, the number of unvetted vessels and aircraft transiting Caribbean airspace and waters has increased, making shared regional surveillance capabilities more critical than ever. The same network of agencies and tracking technology used for broader regional security is now being deployed in this aircraft investigation, Leacock confirmed.

In the aftermath of St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ 2025 general election, one of the most striking shifts in the nation’s political landscape has gone largely underexamined: the growing disconnect between a group of self-styled reform advocates who campaigned for regime change, and their inability to adjust to the reality of democratic governance after their preferred party took power.

At the SVG Development Partners Roundtable held in Kingstown on Tuesday, Ambassador of Finance and Investments Kevin Hope laid out an urgent, bold strategy to pull St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) out of deep fiscal distress and persistent systemic poverty. In a presentation framing SVG’s current reality as a “tale of two cities,” Hope outlined the stark macroeconomic challenges facing the island nation and introduced a coordinated five-year Growth and Stabilisation Plan for 2026–2030, paired with a newly launched 15-year long-term national development framework.

According to official data, SVG will end 2025 with a fiscal deficit equal to 12.3% of gross domestic product. A decade of consecutive shortfalls, compounded by a string of devastating external shocks, has pushed the country’s fiscal and debt trajectory into unsustainable territory, Hope warned. Prime Minister Godwin Friday previously raised alarm that public debt has already climbed above 113% of GDP, and on current policy trajectories, it will surge to 144.5% of GDP by 2031 without immediate intervention. Hope echoed this warning, noting that inaction would only force far harsher austerity measures on the country in the future.

Hope traced the origins of the current crisis to a combination of sequential global and local shocks: the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 eruption of the La Soufriere volcano, economic spillovers from the Russia-Ukraine war, 2024’s Hurricane Beryl, and accumulated long-term fiscal slippages. Beyond these one-off events, deep structural weaknesses have exacerbated the problem, including unsustainable expansion of the public wage bill, widespread tax concessions and expenditures, and inconsistent effectiveness and efficiency of public capital spending, he added.

The fiscal crisis has unfolded alongside fragile social conditions that any policy correction must account for, Hope emphasized. Data from the 2018–2019 Country Poverty Assessment puts national poverty at 25.8%, with 33.7% of households classified as vulnerable to falling into poverty, and 5.9% of the population experiencing food indigence. These figures mean one in four SVG households lives in poverty, and one in three faces immediate risk of poverty.

Hope also highlighted a puzzling “labour market paradox” plaguing the country: between 2016 and 2024–25, the formal labour market grew by 22.5%, yet 2022 data puts overall unemployment at 20.8%, with youth unemployment reaching nearly 35%. Large-scale infrastructure projects, including the modern port development and the new Arnos Vale Hospital, face high demand for certified technical trades, but most skilled workers on these projects are imported from other regional countries. This gap exposes a critical national skills mismatch, Hope said. Compounding the issue, anecdotal evidence suggests nearly half of all unemployed people have stopped actively searching for work, driven by geographic barriers or misalignment between expected and offered wages.

To reverse these trends, Hope placed micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) at the core of the government’s new growth strategy. MSMEs currently generate roughly 60% of total national output and 45% of all jobs in SVG, a country where the services sector makes up 81% of GDP. The path out of indebtedness relies on intentional public-private partnership, Hope argued, with the government’s role shifting to creating incentives, providing critical tools and resources, and enabling the private sector to drive sustainable expansion.

Several foundational institutional reforms are already underway to support this shift: a new Department of Private Sector Development has been established within the Prime Minister’s Office under the Ministry of Finance, and a Private Sector Advisory Committee has been convened to identify regulatory barriers, cut red tape, and reduce the time and cost of doing business. Other ongoing initiatives include strengthening the investment promotion agency Invest SVG and the Centre for Enterprise Development, and drafting new MSME and Investment legislation through the Attorney General’s Chambers.

A key distinction of the government’s new plan is its prioritization: it is framed as “Growth and Stabilisation,” not “Stabilisation and Growth.” While restoring fiscal and debt sustainability is a non-negotiable goal, Hope explained, the government’s top priority remains creating quality, well-paid jobs for Vincentians, and growth must precede harsh austerity to protect livelihoods. Alongside the five-year immediate plan, the government is launching a 15-year national development strategy running from 2027 to 2042 to anchor long-term progress.

Core macro-fiscal targets for the plan include doubling SVG’s baseline trend growth from 2.5–2.7% to 5% in the medium term, then sustaining 4–5% annual growth; achieving and maintaining a 3% of GDP primary surplus by 2030; and meeting the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) mandatory debt target of 60% of GDP by 2035. “Fiscal sustainability is non-negotiable, growth must be structural, not subsidised, and ultimately… people are the ultimate dividends,” Hope said.

On public sector reform, Hope framed proposed rationalization of ministries and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a productivity improvement exercise, not an austerity cuts program. “Rationalisation ought not to be a bad word,” he said. “It really speaks to how do we make the public sector more productive and more efficient, and as such, how do we do more with less?” Rapid assessments of SOE performance are already underway, with public expenditure reviews, strengthened tax administration, and better utilization of administrative data central to the government’s efficiency goals. Recognizing that sharp fiscal adjustment can carry social costs, Hope said the government is pursuing a home-grown, phased reform approach that explicitly protects poor and vulnerable households from adverse impacts.

To finance the plan, Hope called on international development partners to support SVG’s priorities, outlining four core financing pillars: better leveraging of global climate finance to address climate vulnerability; developing innovative debt instruments to lower government borrowing costs; expanding public-private partnerships across key sectors; and boosting domestic resource mobilization by cracking down on tax leakages and strengthening compliance. The government is also actively engaging the SVG diaspora, with recent outreach events across multiple international cities, and is exploring initiatives to allow diaspora members to take equity stakes in national development projects.

In closing, Hope reiterated that all macroeconomic targets and policy reforms must be measured by their impact on the daily lives of ordinary Vincentians, with a core commitment to cutting poverty and unemployment to single digits. “This is ambitious, but this is again why we’re here — to really work towards trying to solve around the socio-economic challenges for St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” he said.

Representatives from a wide range of international and regional partners, including the United Nations, Caribbean Development Bank, World Bank, CAF development bank, European Union, Canada, Germany, China, the United Kingdom, CARICOM Development Fund, UNICEF, UNFPA, WFP, PAHO, and GIZ, broadly endorsed the government’s strategic direction. Partners called for stronger cross-stakeholder coordination, integration of a regional perspective into planning, and explicit ongoing focus on supporting the poorest and most vulnerable Vincentians throughout reform implementation.

At a recently held “North Leeward Matters” town hall gathering in Golden Grove, Kishore Shallow, the sitting Member of Parliament for the North Leeward constituency of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has positioned the proposed Roseau River sand and aggregate harvesting operation as a once-in-a-generation chance to reverse what he calls decades of systemic underdevelopment and disinvestment across the area.

Opening the meeting, which was also attended by Kem Bartholomew, Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Regional Agricultural Grain and Services Authority (BRAGSA), Shallow pulled no punches in laying out the constituency’s long-standing grievances. For years, he argued, residents of North Leeward have been shortchanged across every key sector, from agricultural opportunities to entrepreneurial support and local employment. The most visible signs of this neglect, he stressed, are the constituency’s crumbling feeder roads and long-neglected bridges, which have remained in a state of disrepair for years, including the structurally deficient crossing in Fitz Hughes that has only just reached the final stages of completion.

Shallow pointed to one persistent bottleneck that has held back local infrastructure development for decades: the exorbitant cost and logistical challenge of hauling aggregate construction materials all the way from the Rabacca region in northeastern St. Vincent and other distant supply sources. With the Roseau harvesting project set to bring high-quality aggregate production directly to North Leeward, that long-standing barrier will finally be eliminated, he said, drastically cutting the overall cost of all public and private infrastructure projects across the Leeward coast.

Calling the untapped sand and gravel deposits a “blessing, a gold mine” for the constituency, Shallow revealed that BRAGSA has made a formal commitment that North Leeward will not merely serve as a host for the operation, but will be positioned at the center of the resulting economic and infrastructure gains. Refusing to accept vague, long-term promises of future benefit, Shallow said he pressed Bartholomew for concrete, time-bound deliverables for local residents, demanding clear commitments for gains by the end of the current year and in the immediate 12-month period after. Specific priority projects Shallow has pushed to advance include the construction of new bus stops in Petit Bordel, Rose Bank and Rose Hall, the long-overdue completion of feeder roads that have remained unfinished for more than five years, and the prompt construction of a replacement for the aging Fitz Hughes bridge.

Beyond infrastructure upgrades, Shallow confirmed that he has secured a formal commitment that priority for all new jobs created by the project will go to North Leeward residents. BRAGSA has no plans to import an outside workforce for the operation, he said, and will instead run specialized training programs to prepare local workers to operate heavy machinery and fill open roles, creating much-needed immediate employment for local people.

Against a backdrop of widespread local anger over the controversial existing Rayneau quarry operation in Richmond, Shallow took great pains to draw a clear line between that unpopular venture and the new Roseau project. The Richmond quarry, approved by the previous Unity Labour Party (ULP) administration in 2022, sparked widespread outcry after developers moved heavy equipment through active farmland to begin work on a 30-year lease of 59 acres of state-owned agricultural land leased to a St. Lucian businessman. Shallow, who took office last November as part of the New Democratic Party’s landslide 14-1 election victory over the ULP, noted that the Richmond quarry’s environmental impacts have already derailed a planned World Bank-funded recreational development project for the area, demonstrating how poor planning can hold back, rather than advance, local development. In contrast, Shallow explained, the Roseau project has already undergone full expert environmental assessment to avoid the same missteps, and will not alter the natural landscape of the Roseau River coast.

Going beyond just distinguishing the two projects, Shallow announced that the new administration will launch a full review of the existing Richmond quarry contract. The Attorney General will examine the agreement to identify any legal pathways for action, and the government will also commission an independent environmental assessment of the current quarry operation to address widespread local concerns.

Shallow also urged local residents to view the Roseau project as both a solution to local grievances and a catalyst for national economic growth. Revenue generated from the operation will flow through BRAGSA to support national development, he explained, and even before full operations have launched, the authority has already secured pre-contracts for aggregate supply to development projects in Canouan, Bequia and other parts of the Grenadines. The project will also allow the country to harvest a valuable natural resource that would otherwise be washed out to sea and lost.

Wrapping up his remarks, Shallow framed the public town hall, which included full disclosure of contract details for the Canouan supply agreement and public projections of the total value of the Roseau deposits, as part of the new government’s commitment to radical transparency for all state-led infrastructure and resource development projects, emphasizing that the initiative has nothing to hide from local voters.