Leader of the Dominica Freedom Party, Kent Vital, said there is no substance to the 9% regional growth projected for Dominica in 2019. Vital, an economist, said it is not realistic in any way based on certain indices. The 9% growth predicted for the country was contained in a December 2018 report released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
The report supposes that following Hurricane Maria in 2017, the volumes of funding and donations coming from international agencies for reconstruction would trigger massive economic growth in Dominica. It is believed that the international funding would be targeted at rebuilding damaged houses, bridges, national monuments and other structural facilities in the country.
With Dominica leading with a projected 9% regional growth, it is predicted that the following countries will come up with their own growth potentials:
- Dominican Republic – 5.7%
- Panama – 5.6%
- Antigua and Barbuda – 4.7%
- Guyana – 4.6%
However, DFP leader Vital revealed the projected growth is a fluke. He said there is no basis for the prediction to come through since no economic opportunities or new jobs are being created. He said the aids given to the country are only to revitalize existing businesses or rebuild building facilities destroyed by hurricanes. To buttress this point, Vital pointed out that the reconstruction efforts going on in the country at the moment are largely financed by foreign agencies and not by the Skerrit administration.
“You’re not adding jobs; you’re only rebuilding damaged homes,” Vital pointed out.
“There is Samaritan Purse and they are doing a lot of work,” he said. “A lot of people who got their houses rebuilt have the international agencies to thank and not our government. It is the benevolence of somebody out there who has decided to help us. My thing about the reconstruction is that there is very little transparency in what these guys do…very little transparency. And knowing them, knowing how corrupt they are, the fact is, if they spend 20 or 40 million on construction of those kind of housing, I would guess that quite a bit of these is inflated figures. A little bit of these is money siphoned off over pricing so that the person doing the construction gets a bigger benefit and they pass off some of that to somebody involved or the political party in government in times of campaigns. We know these guys lifestyles, we know their kinds of campaigns; where do they get that kind of money?”
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