POLITICAL LUNACY! Category six hurricane Gaston Browne about to hit Antigua-Barbuda

By Glendon Phillip

Sensing that his political future is in doubt after his lacklustre performance, Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne is desperate, threatening now to commit what is nothing short of political lunacy.

If the people of Antigua and Barbuda thought nothing could be worse than Category Five Hurricane Irma which completely devastated Barbuda, then they have another guess coming. A category six hurricane in the person of Gaston Browne has formed in the eastern Caribbean.

It will be worse than anything they have so far experienced because it will cripple not only Barbuda but Antigua this time.

PM Browne, in a bid to frighten investors in the hotel industry, says he wants his and other Caribbean governments to acquire ownership in hotels in their territories on grounds that they are operating “like a plantation industry”.

“The hoteliers, they are brutal in their requirements. They ask for up to 25 years concessions on everything, they don’t want to pay no taxes, when their tax (exemptions) run out they come back and they insist you must renew it, and when you decide you don’t want to do it because you are trying to protect Government’s revenue, they hold you hostage to fortune,” Browne said.

With tourism accounting for 70 per cent of the island’s gross domestic product (GDP) of $1.5 billion, it is obvious that what Browne is advocating is the complete obliteration of his country’s economy.

Other Caribbean governments, who are already laughing him to scorn, are instead seeking to attract foreign investment on the basis of realistic returns in a drastically competitive investment climate and an unusually stubborn global economic environment.

Browne’s small-minded approach to looking at the tourism industry reminds of the story of the envious dog and the bone.

With a juicy-looking bone in its mouth, the dog is passing by a well. It looks in and sees a reflection of itself and the bone in the water. Thinking that it should also have that bone, the dog jumps in the well and, of course, loses everything!

The tourism industry in Antigua is the bone in the form of the largest employer of its people; the largest private earner of foreign exchange; the largest taxpayer; the biggest promoter of the island; and the industry responsible for the bulk of commercial flights into the island, bringing in visitors and taking out exports — in short, the largest contributor to the economy by far.

After Browne’s scorched earth policy has succeeded in driving out hotel investors, he is clearly prepared to preside over a hungry, jobless population, empty hotel rooms, deserted skies, and a Government that cannot pay its bills — as long as he can call himself prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda.

In his flight of fancy, which he terms “entrepreneurial socialism”, Browne says: “…we will risk our capital. We will borrow the money, we will invest in these hotels and we will lease them to the private sector to operate.

“We don’t want to run hotels, we don’t have the expertise to run hotels, but we are creative enough to raise the funds so that we can build hotels for the benefit of the people of Antigua and Barbuda.”

Ironically, just weeks before running off at the mouth about being willing to risk Antigua’s capital to pump money into hotels which the Government can’t run, Browne had gone to the United Nations to bellyache about the high cost of commercial loans to fund hurricane reconstruction “swelling our already burdensome national debt”.

In the best traditions of the seasoned mendicant, he was not ashamed to tell the world community: “…We have not outstretched the palm of our hand because we crave; we plead because we need.”

He then went on radio in Antigua to lambaste the World Bank for offering loans for which, “As far as we are concerned, the term is too short. And we have asked them to reconsider and perhaps consider up to 20 years with a five-year moratorium… and to lower interest rates from three per cent to one per cent.

“If it were grants, we would push for some more, but we have to be careful in terms of how much we borrow, because…you have to have the capacity to repay,” Browne complained.

So on what basis is he going to borrow money to buy into hotels which are not going under? Unless he was foolhardy enough to be trying to trick the international community with his silly sad story.

There must be someone in Browne’s Cabinet who can educate him. There is no investor or lender willing to risk their money in a country with an outmoded socialist leader who has shown scant regard for foreign investors — even when they come from the Caribbean Community — and who has torn up agreements signed by previous governments without batting an eyelid.

It is clear that much of Browne’s intemperate outburst is the result of a fevered imagination in which he sees himself in the company of the likes of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. For enlightenment, he should look at the state of the Cuban and Venezuelan economies, before it is too late.

Moreover, he could learn a lesson or two from what happened to the tourist industry in Jamaica during the socialist days of the 1970s when the Government was forced to take over more and more hotels as the foreign owners fled, bankrupting Jamaica.

Welcome to the past, Mr Browne.

— Glendon Phillip is an international investment consultant working in the Caribbean region.