By Earl Bousquet

Castries (The Voice): A fellow regional political observer -also a colleague journalist, friend and Comrade- responding to regional reports on the Saint Lucia Prime Minister’s 2024 end-of-year press conference, told me by phone Thursday: “Under Philip J. Pierre, these past three years have been seeing progress in Saint Lucia on steroids!”

   He was particularly impressed by the government’s ability, in these globally hard times when post-COVID ‘imported inflation’ continued to affect citizens by unprecedented spiraling price increases (thanks to production shortfalls, supply chain shortfalls and international conflicts), to have provided ‘the cushions’ to protect ‘Single Parent Families and the Elderly’.

    Cushioning actions included increasing non-taxable incomes to $30,000 annually -meaning no Saint Lucian earning $2,500 per month, or less- will pay income taxes.

   For second year, Pierre’s government delivered ‘One-off Payments’ to National Insurance Corporation (NIC) Pensioners -and this year more-than-doubled minimum pensions payments from $300 to at least $750 monthly.

   Government also this year implemented a national ‘Minimum Liveable Wage’ of $1,131 monthly and continued subsidizing and removing all taxes on basic foodstuffs and LPG cooking gas.

   The new national minimum wage is unprecedented and historic and the government hopes it will also be duly recognized by private employers, as it will assist workers to cope with the still-rising prices for everyday necessities across the business sector.

   The Government’s Negotiating Team and trade unions representing government employees also agreed on all allowances -and arrived at an unprecedented six-year agreement for a 13% increase between 2022 and 2028. In addition, a ‘tax free backpay’ will be paid in February 2025.

   The PM said he’d hoped to pay the outstanding backpay to public servants for Christmas 2024, but administrative and other reasons having not made that possible. He felt every public servant and government employee, including pensioners, “need to be rewarded for their patience and understanding.”

   As a result, the PM requested and his Cabinet agree to pay a one-off $500 bonus to every public sector worker -meaning, some $6,000,000 will (have been) distributed equally to 12,381 workers (including pensioners and police officers) on December 20, in time for Christmas.

   The Prime Minister’s Office had earlier announced continued success in reducing employment in 2024 -from 11.37% in the First Quarter, to 11.25% in the Second and 11.8% in the Third.

   Never one to boast about his government’s achievements or to remind citizens of its deliveries under his leadership, Prime Minister Pierre started his end-of-year press conference by simply reminding the people, through the press, that when his administration took office in 2021, he promised it would be one that would always seek to ‘Put the People of Saint Lucia First’.

   The new administration, with a 13-4 majority, called on the citizenry to “put our shoulders to the wheel and work together to grow the economy.”

   The island was still reeling under the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic by the then-ruling United Workers Party administration (2015-2021).

  The then government, by the hands of the then Prime Minister, paid an overseas entity $7,300,000 in April 2021 (three months before General Elections) for 100,000 covid vaccines -that were neither for sale, nor delivered- leaving the Treasury dented and the entity concerned in debt to Saint Lucia, still being repaid.

   Indeed, the Pierre administration inherited an economy that had seen its GDP plummet by 24.4% in 2020, thanks to a combination of COVID and gubernatorial financial mismanagement.

   The Prime Minister’s rallying call for national unity after the 2021 elections resulted in two independent parliamentarians joining the new administration at Cabinet level, leaving the UWP with only 2 of the 17 seats, further strengthening the government’s majority to 15 -more than the two-thirds majority it already had.

   From then on, it’s been full-speed-ahead for government’s progress in fulfilling its pre-and-post election promise to ‘Put People First’.

   Every meeting of the House of Assembly since August 2021 has adopted legislation to deliver on SLP election campaign promises that would touch all citizens, already earning this administration the record of the longest ongoing of parliamentary delivery of election promises during a single term since independence (1979).

   PM Pierre ended his brief (4:31 minutes) statement promising: “We will continue to work together to grow our economy, face our challenges vigorously and collectively create a better life for all.”

   As per usual, the limp opposition UWP is trying hard to distract attention from the Prime Minister’s positive end-of-year announcements by promising to take the government before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) on unproven claims by a vexatious litigant with no business in Saint Lucia, regarding the island’s Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP).

   The Opposition Leader is also laughably calling on the government to put its CIP on pause until after the CCJ hearing, which is yet to be initiated -and all that after the loud litigant voluntarily withdrew a ‘RICOH’ case he’d claimed to have filed in the US, citing costs, among other things.

   With General Elections officially due two years away (2026), the UWP has signaled its intention to rewind and replay unproven corruption claims against one minister in a government led by a Prime Minister never accused of corruption in his 30-year career as a parliamentarian.

   But the government remains hell-bent on ensuring it continues delivering on its major promises in 2025 and 2026, including the completion of the 12-year-old reconstruction of the St. Jude Hospital and Hewanorra International Airport (HIA) in Vieux Fort and the two-decades-old plan for construction of the Halls of Justice project, finally underway in Castries this year.

   While the Opposition continues meandering along its backward path, economic growth will continue in 2025, the PM’s Office having earlier announced that ‘Saint Lucia’s economy is experiencing a remarkable turnaround, with GDP is projected to grow by 4.3% in the 2024/25 financial year’ -to mark a fourth consecutive year of growth above 3%.

   All that was only possible, it said, ‘thanks to government’s introduction of bold fiscal and economic policies that have not only stabilized the economy, but also set it on a path of sustained growth, driven by key sectors like construction and tourism.’

   Tourism, a vital pillar of the economy, surpassed pre-pandemic levels this year, with stay-over arrivals from January to October 2024 exceeding 2019 figures.

   My colleague’s description of the economy as ‘progressing on steroids’ won’t go down well with the permanent preachers of doom and gloom when in opposition, but it’s surely an apt description considering what the Philip J. Pierre administration inherited in July 2021 and what it’s delivered three-and-a-half years later.

   Barring the worst of unforeseen circumstances, Saint Lucians can spend Christmas and the New Year confident that 2025 will be another rollicking year for revival of confidence in a government that delivers on its promises to all, ever-endeavoring to live up to its original promise of always ‘Putting People First’.

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The Voice is a major Saint Lucia newspaper covering local, Caribbean and international news.

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