Editorial – August 30, 2013
As one would expect there are those who are always opining about the state of the Montserrat economy. But in the face of what is thrown at every one, day after day and many times a day about the world economy since, say 2008, it seems so easy to shrug shoulders, and declare, “what can anyone do about it,” or more emphatically, “no one can do anything about it.”
Then there are those who will say, that is just a cop-out, and then who are the ones saying that? Do they have the answer? Maybe not, but they may have an answer. There are those who are prepared to think, take a step back, and see from whence they came. Something has become very clear in recent times therefore; it is that everyone is dependent on everyone else. What a laugh some would have, but the fact is that is the way of nature and the creation. The only thing about that that man has evolved and that dependency is not equal even among equals.
So there is the conversation among nations of people or groups of people, islands, countries of whatever description, there is political, economical, independence and any named independence. There are all manner of independencies. Montserrat falls into one of the many categories of dependencies and is a country, a tiny island of people, dependent on the Her Majesty’s Queen Elizabeth II’s Government, the British Government. Under an indifferent, mixed-up and difficult political leadership, it strains, as expected, unequally, to raise about 45 per cent of its recurrent budget with HMG funding the rest and all capital expenditure.
But Montserrat is a little different from the other Dependent Territories with whom it shares the status of British Overseas Territories. This is so because it was severely demolished with the advent of a volcanic eruption creating a crisis that encouraged HMG to wish the entire island evacuated of its people.
That began in 1995 and by 2008, few people understood that HMG’s worry, as they pinned the phrase ‘sustainable development’ on Montserrat, accepted from ten years earlier, was not development but sustenance, until then they (HMG) accepted that there is the possibility the island can regain some semblance of economic viability.
By this time we have been calling “sustainable development”, bad words which should be avoided. However, indifference and all kinds of other ills were well rooted, having existed even before the crisis began. There were no eyes for innovation and newness and development. Building up the comfort of the public service, and the perceived housing needs, required but so poorly organised were excuses for not really understanding how we should proceed.
HMG admitted quietly, publicized by us that they had made mistakes on the way, acknowledging primarily transportation, since they recognized that tourism which once, the strongest income for Montserrat had suffered terribly. An inadequate (temporary) turned permanent like some other things airport, not owning a ferry, not building a port etc. They were willing to do anything to mend this but they needed to hear from the people.
By 2011 with our political curse striving, talk of strategic growth plans emerged, but the sustainable development plan continued. But without understanding to do some simple things to create employment and keep the dwindling economy and population from stagnation and hence further decline, after doing nothing up came some grand ideas. More mistakes and instead of reviving, and reverting to what was well known and with some preparations underway, the need to create new jobs was forgotten. Reopen the Vue Pointe, let the entire area be populated again. It would change the economic environment almost overnight. The political leaders should speak to this instead of boasting the putting back to work the labour force that has been working all along, even if it was now and then.
An honest analysis will show that wooing 3,000 Montserratians to visit home, as desirable for the good it will do must continue, but with the knowledge that there must be on the ground something that will attract them to remain, a means to exist here, especially that they add very little to an already exasperating circumstance.
The grandiose plans for Little Bay and Carrs Bay will not help the situation between now and 2016, being modest since recently that date keeps going further into the future, like 2020. One thing seems luminous, HMG is not enamored by those plans we have by the conditions that have been created and agreed, complicated by our own unwillingness to stick to good rules. The stage was set in 2011 with nothing significant prepared when Minister of State Duncan visited.
We explain next week.
