Prime Minister Gaston Browne has expressed disappointment at the low number of residents making use of monies available at the Entrepreneurial Development Fund (EDF).
The Prime Minister said his administration has gone above and beyond to provide concessions and funding to help Antiguans and Barbuans find their entrepreneurial footing.
“We have, for example, the Entrepreneurial Development Fund — that fund still has a few million dollars available,” the Prime Minister said on Pointe FM’s Browne and Browne Show.
“I hear people saying that we need to make monies available. There’s money available. There has always been money available even prior to COVID.
“And even up to this point, the EDF has not seen any increase in their applications even though there is so much quarrel about how we need to make money available and loans available to the private sector. But there’s cheap money there. We have one per cent money, as low as one per cent,” Browne added.
Lowest tax jurisdiction in the Caribbean
The Prime Minister said he has asked the Economic Recovery Committee — established to develop strategies to kick-start the economy post COVID-19 — to make an extra effort to get greater buy-in on the idea of local direct investment.
He said while locals continue to leave the many opportunities available for business innovation unexplored, undeveloped or underdeveloped, “when the expatriates come then you get angry.”
“We have to develop our own entrepreneurial capacity and it should come out of the private sector,” Browne said.
“I am satisfied that the government would have gone as far as possible to put a good framework in place, a low tax jurisdiction — the lowest tax jurisdiction in the Caribbean and one of the lowest in the world if not the lowest — and that’s one of the areas that has literally squeezed government’s finances because of how generous we have been with our tax regime,” he added.
More money to be pumped into EDF
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said that the EDF is due to get a top up soon.
“We have $50 million in guarantees that we have announced and we also will be making another $50 million available to the EDF and the Antigua and Barbuda Development Bank,” he explained.
“There’s about $11 million that should come from the Caribbean Development Fund, we’ve asked them to expedite that so that the development bank will have that. We have $13.5 million coming from Global Ports and some additional funds will be paid in by the government.” (268 TODAY)
