YELLOW SPLIT PEAS AND RICE
MACARONI PIE; GREEN BANANA AND SALT FISH
BAKED CHICKEN; BAKED SPARERIBS
GRILLED DOLPHIN; FRIED SNAPPER
FRIED KING FISH; PICKLED BREADFRUIT
FISH GRAVY; TURKEY STEW
TOSSED SALAD; STEAMED VEGETABLES
The International Day of Peace, observed each year on 21 September, is a global call for ceasefire and non-violence. It is a time to reflect on the horror and cost of war and the benefits of peacefully resolving our disputes. This year, I will use this important day to ask governments and citizens of the world to focus on the important issues of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
The end of the Cold War helped lift the burden of nuclear catastrophe from a generation that had lived under its cloud since the end of the Second World War. Nonetheless, the threat persists, as recent events attest. Unless we vigorously work for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, we will continue to face threats from existing nuclear weapons, as well as additional risks that more States, even terrorists, might acquire and deploy such weapons, potentially annihilating millions of people.
This alarming outlook is counterbalanced by a new momentum on the part of world leaders to address the issue of nuclear weapons. The United States and the Russian Federation have signalled a new commitment to cut their nuclear arsenals. Furthermore, the Conference on Disarmament, which includes all States with nuclear arms, has recently broken a decade-long deadlock and agreed to work to resolve some of the key issues related to disarmament and non-proliferation.
We must build on this momentum. To that end, I am launching the WMD-WeMustDisarm! Campaign. Over the next 100 days, the United Nations and our partners around the world will work to raise awareness of the true costs and dangers of nuclear weapons. Between now and 21 September, we will issue 100 reasons to disarm, via Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, email, text message, radio and from friend-to-friend. Celebrities will also help us spread the message. And finally, as we observe the International Day of Peace with world leaders gathered in New York for the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, I will proclaim one strong, simple message: We Must Disarm!
Opposition Leader Lester Bird is hinting that there is something sinister about the government’s plan to approach the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In his weekly broadcast address, Bird said the IMF has in mind a programme in which Antigua and Barbuda will only be in line for a maximum of US$13.5 million loan per year for three years.
“It is a drop in the ocean of needs that the UPP regime has created. It will hardly help to create the jobs we need; it will be inadequate to pay wages and salaries in the public service; it will be insufficient to re-build the roads that have deteriorated under the UPP,” Bird explained.
He said the reason that the government is pursuing an IMF programme, even though it doesn’t offer much by way of funds to bail out the country from its economic troubles, is to justify some of its plans particularly for the public sector.
“They want it because they can use the IMF to justify what they have been doing all along, and what they will continue to do. And, that is to dismiss more public servants; enlarge the categories of people who will have to pay personal income tax; widen the number of goods and services on which the government sales tax will be imposed and reduce programmes that they themselves introduced to lure people to vote for them,” Bird charged.
He said among the programmes the government plans to reduce are the free school uniforms and school meals initiatives.
Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer indicated recently in a programme on national television that the possibility does exist that the government’s social programmes will be subject to some adjustments.
“IMF or no IMF these programmes will remain intact. Of course, we are in a dynamic situation, things are changing around us, and these programmes obviously would have to be looked at to ensure that we are delivering in the best ways. We also need to ensure that these programmes are efficient and that the people who are really supposed to benefit from this programme do benefit,” Spencer had stated.
Bird further went on to state that the IMF is only interested in assisting Antigua and Barbuda “because they want the first priority to be repayment of foreign debt.”
“They want their usual prescription of more taxes and less spending by government; they want the sell-off of state-owned enterprises such as APUA, the Airport and the Port,” Bird stated, likening the lending institutions policy to backdoor economic colonialism.
“This is the policy of globalisation that the IMF is mandated to execute. It is a policy of the transfer of assets from local ownership to foreign ownership. It is economic colonialism by the back door,” Bird said.
Prime Minister Spencer during the present meeting of Parliament confirmed earlier indications that Antigua and Barbuda was heading down a path toward an IMF programme.
But Spencer said it will be according to the government’s terms.
Spencer noted that an approach to the IMF is a must, confirming earlier indications by the AntiguaSun that the government was preparing to engage the lending institution.
“Let me make it clear that this is our programme. In October 2009, IMF representatives are expected to visit Antigua and Barbuda where they will meet with government officials to commence negotiating the terms of their assistance. Under this fund assisted programme, the IMF will not prescribe structural adjustment conditions but rather agree with the government on the various targets established in our home-grown programme,” Prime Minister Spencer explained.
Finance ministers from across the Eastern Caribbean, including Antigua and Barbuda’s Harold Lovell, met last Friday following the conclusion of a Boot Camp on economic and financial adjustments in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU), which took place during the 7 – 16 Sept.
The Monetary Council of the ECCB meeting was held at its headquarters in St. Kitts/Nevis under the chairmanship of Prime Minister of Dominica Roosevelt Skerritt.
During a video conference on Friday just after the meeting, Skerritt said the Monetary Council has opined that while the focus of the Boot Camp was primarily stability, there was an urgent need to position economies to achieve and maintain growth rates of six percent.
According to him, this is in order to achieve broader economic objectives of less than six per cent unemployment levels, poverty levels not exceeding six percent, maintaining high human development indices, and transforming the ECCU economies.
“This strategic response of member governments of the ECCU is aimed at stabilising and transforming the economies with three main objectives, namely: stabilisation, stimulus, and structural reform,” Skerritt said. “In addition, the plan outlines the critical role that partnership with the private sector would play in achieving the stated objectives of the programme.”
He further stated that the Monetary Council noted the common challenges being faced by member states because of the international financial crisis.
Contraction in the real GDP in the medium term because of declines in tourism receipts and foreign direct investment; and the challenging debt to GDP ratios resulting in limitations on governments’ ability to adopt counter cyclical policies to mitigate the impact of the crisis were some of the challenges, which were outlined.
The council also received the main issues and recommendations arising from the financial programmes of member countries during the Boot Camp. It made several agreements in relation to the Policy Making Framework and the first five points of the Eight Point Stabilisation and Growth Programme.
Skerritt added that the council agreed that the Macroeconomic Policy Making Framework and Architecture in the ECCU needed to be further strengthened. The council also agreed that an increased focus on statistical improvement was urgently required, a fiscal prudence was critical, more focus needs to be placed on debt management and that there should be well structured Public Sector Investment Programmes (PSIP).
The Boot Camp represents a high point in the efforts, which began on 15-16 Jan., with the first joint meeting of the OECS Authority and ECCB Monetary Council where an action plan was developed to respond to the crisis. The main objective of the “Boot Camp” was to develop a coherent and internally consistent strategy, through the financial programming exercise, to implement the ECCU Eight-Point Stabilisation and Growth Programme.
Prime Minister of St. Vincent & the Grenadines Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has cautioned that policyholders who “wish to intervene and muddy the waters” of the British American Insurance debacle, can proceed but unless governments take the necessary action, he does not see them finding resolve anytime soon.
“I read the AntiguaSun every single morning and I saw that people are saying that they will go to the courts, they will do this, and they will do that, well I wish them well,” Gonsalves said.
“You may have a lovely judgement in your hands, a lovely piece of paper and lawyers would celebrate but of course, the paper would not be able to pay for the fine wine which you have consumed until this matter is sorted out.”
Gonsalves was at the time responding to a question about British American (BA) Insurance and CL Financial Group when he made the comment. This was during a video conference following the sixth special meeting at the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) Headquarters in St Kitts and Nevis.
Over 200 people who have been affected by the demise of the company gathered last Monday night in the auditorium at the Simon Bolivar Park to begin the process of mounting a forceful lobby to recoup their savings.
According to Gonsalves, the matter of BA, has been occupying the minds of the ministers of finance over the last eight and half months.
He said that each country needs to take a stock of precisely what are the liabilities and to what extent there is a shortfall in the statutory fund in each of these countries.
“It has long been established that there is in fact in each country a shortfall in the statutory fund and some of the assets in the statutory fund are not necessarily assets of a particular policy which can easily be realisable,” Dr. Gonsalves stated.
The prime minister explained that one could go easily to the courts if the relevant official in a country does not give a copy of the quota but “whilst all of that is happening we have to look ahead.”
The Monetary Council has established four principles upon which they will seek a solution to the British American issue.
Some of those are to ensure that policyholders do not suffer a loss, there should be a regional approach to the matter, and that BA be continued as one entity.
He disclosed that they have already secured US$50 million from the Petroleum Facility in Trinidad and Tobago and that is currently lodged at the ECCB.
The Barbados government has also indicated its willingness to put US$5 million in equity and another US$5 million as a loan while the governments of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the private sector of the OECS will raise in the region of US$75 million.
“These are not problems which are going to be solved by shouting. It requires creative work by a number of serious professionals under wide leadership,” Gonsalves said.
The Monetary Council will be putting together a team to work on some of the technical matters concerning the issue.
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Fear not. These were the words Prime Minister Patrick Manning used to assure supporters of the ruling party and the rest of the country that his administration was steering the economy well in what are “murky and treacherous” financial waters. He did so as his administration is facing criticism from the Opposition and other quarters about how it plans to spend State funds in its 2010 national budget. To address an almost $8 billion revenue shortfall in the budget, Manning has announced a bold new plan to encourage energy sector exploration companies such as bpTT to spend “billions of dollars” to drill for oil and natural gas in a new deepwater province off the eastern coast of Trinidad. Manning said talks in this regard were ongoing as he disclosed the Government has “just concluded a revamp of the tax regime governing (oil and gas) exploration in the entire country”, at a time when more natural gas, in particular, needs to be brought into production. “I assure you that the PNM possesses the expertise and the confidence that is required to take this country safely and to navigate us through these murky and treacherous waters. My words to you would be ‘fear not’,” Manning said. Manning spoke of his administration’s plans to deal with the nation’s economic challenges during the People’s National Movement’s September Affair dinner and dance at the Cascadia Hotel, St Ann’s on Saturday night in celebration of the Republic Day holiday on Thursday. Manning said those plans also included the possibility and potential of projections in the energy sector which have the capacity to stimulate the development of ship building and ship repair facilities which are earmarked for St Vincent and the Grenadines, to stimulate more revenue. It was only last Wednesday that Chief Justice Ivor Archie  noted the while the Judiciary requested $349 million it will have to make do with the $42.5 million it received in allocations out of the Government’s 2010 budget which was passed by the House of Representatives in Port of Spain last week. The Senate will begin its debate of the budget tomorrow morning. Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira said on Thursday that every ministry, without exception, received no more than 15 per cent of their request under the development programme for fiscal 2010. |
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THE wife of Michael Arneaud, Trinidad and Tobago’s former ambassador to Washington, DC, was killed on Saturday night when a 32-foot boat piloted by her husband slammed into a cliff at Monos Island off Trinidad’s western peninsula. Arneaud, 69, a former president of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Commerce, suffered serious injuries in the accident. His wife of 40 years, Sharon Arneaud, 64, died in the crash while three close friends sustained multiple injuries. Sharon Arneaud was involved in the local golf fraternity. Others injured in the crash included Miami-based physician Dr Ormond Mendes, his wife, Judy Mendes and a friend, Patricia Pantin. Around 7.15 p.m. on Saturday, Michael Arneaud was at the wheel of the one-year-old boat called Sisu. He and the other passengers were travelling from Gasparee Island to Monos. A close friend, Maria Nunes, said they attended a church mass on Gasparee Island following which Michael Arneaud offered to take Dr Mendes, his wife and Pantin back to Monos Island where they were staying. That night the skies were clear but there was no electricity on Monos Island. An eyewitness who spoke to reporters said yesterday: “I was relaxing when suddenly I heard a loud explosion.” He said he turned on a powerful spotlight and saw the Sisu after it slammed into a cliff. Residents on Monos Island responded and assisted the injured people. The Coast Guard was also contacted. Public relations officer Lt Kirk Jean-Baptiste said they responded in under 15 minutes. The cause of the accident was not officially determined yesterday. The Coast Guard said in a statement: “The residents of Monos Island conducted the initial rescue of the injured parties. Coast Guard responded with medics and medical equipment and stretchers on board (their newly acquired interceptors) 022 and 024,” transferring the victims to Staubles Bay, Chaguaramas. From there, the Coast Guard and Regiment pressed their ambulances into service, taking the injured passengers to the Westshore Medical Centre at Cocorite. Dr Mendes contacted his son, Dr Bobby Mendes, and he met the five at the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay installation. He sat in the ambulance with Sharon Arneaud, the most severely injured. Nunes said he tried everything he could to save her but by the time they got to Westshore, she had died. Reports yesterday said Sharon Arneaud sustained a severe chest injury. Michael Arneaud was last night at the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit with shoulder and head injuries. His condition was described as serious. The other three passengers on the boat were treated at Westshore and discharged. Judy Mendes suffered facial injuries when she was thrown forward during the boat crash and Patrice Pantin fractured her skull. Last month, another boat accident, this time at Scotland Bay on Trinidad’s west coast, left three people injured. Racquel Welch, her daughter, Paige Welch, and a friend of the family, Lance Aqui, were hospitalised after their kayak was hit by a pirogue piloted by a Regiment private. Carenage police are continuing investigations into that incident. |
| GEORGETOWN, Guyana — President Bharrat Jagdeo confirmed on Friday that Guyana received the promised $3 billion (US$15 million) from the regional Petroleum Fund. The money is to be used to assist Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO)-Guyana, which is a subsidiary of now Insolvent CL Financial based in Trinidad and Tobago.
This money, according to the head of state, will assist in meeting the liabilities of CLICO here, especially with regards to payments of small policy holders. During the 5th Summit of the Americas held in Trinidad and Tobago last April, Jagdeo lobbied for Guyana to receive the additional funds and subsequent to his return here told reporters that he had argued for Guyana and other Caricom countries to be included when a decision was taken to put US$50 million from the Petroleum Fund into a special facility to deal with the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) countries that had problems with British American (Insurance Company), because they have some issues which are related to the CL Financial Group. “I said, I thought it’s unfair… this is a regional problem and requires a regional solution… I argued for an additional US$15 million to come from that fund and to come from Guyana to assist with CLICO.” CLICO (Guyana) a few months back was deemed insolvent by judicial manager Maria van Beek after she revealed that the company’s liabilities will exceed its assets by $11.9 billion. Meanwhile, on Friday at State House, Jagdeo told reporters that the government, through its legal team, continues to monitor the court case in the Bahamas, while locally government is waiting on the Chief Justice to rule on the liquidation of the company. The injection of the US$15 million from the Petroleum Fund is expected to significantly reduce the gap between the liabilities and assets. This interjection, along with other interventions could see the gap being completely eliminated, thereby negating the need to use taxpayers’ money. CLICO (Guyana) invested $6.9 billion in CLICO (Bahamas) which represented 53 percent of the local company’s assets. Although these investments were liquid on paper, subsequent investigations revealed that this sum has been tied up in real estate investments that CLICO (Bahamas) had in Florida through subsidiaries. |
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GEORGETOWN, Guyana — The government in Guyana has set aside GY$400 million (US$2 million) to help revive the crippling local rice industry amidst the high in put costs farmers are complaining about.
This was announced on Friday evening by President Bharrat Jagdeo at a media conference after a meeting with rice farmers and their representative body, the Rice Producers Association (RPA) and the Ministers of Finance and Agriculture. According to Jagdeo the amount will ensure that some of the problems facing the industry are addressed in a more definitive manner and has tasked the RPA and the farmers will over the next two weeks to come up with a plan as to how the funds can be best utilized. “The situation is very difficult for many of them, based on the high cost of inputs and the difficulties that they have with some millers and the prices that are currently available for their paddy… so we have set aside 400 million dollars to assist the industry in the short, the medium, and subsequently the long term, because this industry must survive. Its critical to our economy and we have to ensure it lives on,” Jagdeo said. Meanwhile, he said the Government is aggressively looking to expand markets available for the industry as this year’s production will be the highest ever. In light of this, Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud in addressing the opening of the 32nd Special Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED), called on sister Caribbean states to buy Guyana’s rice. He explained that Guyana is expecting a bumper rice crop, the highest in recent decades, and according to Minister Persaud it is expected that all Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states will support the Caribbean rice industry by looking at this country. “We must insist that extra-regional rice, heavily subsidized, is not allowed into the region, and if states do not insist, the Common External Tariff (CET) must be applied so as to ensure that our rice producers have access to our region’s market.” The issue of intra-regional trade has been a long-standing problem plaguing CARICOM member states, even though much energy and resources are expended in negotiating extra regional trade arrangements, regional producers continue to face market access problems intra-regionally. Persaud also noted his satisfaction with the region’s efforts in seeking to reaffirm the commitment given by the Government of Haiti to allow all CARICOM goods duty free access, adding “Within this framework, Guyana intends to pursue a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to allow duty-free access for rice which currently faces a tariff of eight percent, thus restricting export to just about 25,000 tonnes per annum. Guyana has been insisting on no waiver of the CET, which is being charged on rice being exported from out of the region to CARICOM, so that the CARICOM market can be fully utilised. Persaud, in an invited comment to reporters following the opening ceremony, reiterated that the Guyana Government would be seeking to engage and conclude a MOU with the Haitians, “so that we can double or increase exports to that country further.” Haiti, according to Persaud, imports much of its rice from the US and the commodity is subsidised, a situation which has destroyed the Haitian rice industry. And, not wanting a repeat of such a situation, Guyana in its proposal, has offered to lend technical assistance to the Haitians in rebuilding their rice industry, Persaud said. He however pointed out that Guyana’s gesture is not only to benefit from the sale of rice to Haiti and get a greater market share, but also, in the spirit of the community, to work with Haiti in rebuilding it’s rice industry so that all CARICOM States could enjoy some degree of food security. “We have already communicated our intentions as it relates to the MOU, we’ve had some technical discussions and we hope that very soon we would be able send a technical mission to advance this further”. “We are also pursing similar initiatives with the Venezuelans, the Cubans and the Columbians, so as to widen the market base for rice,” he added. On the issue of remuneration, the Agriculture Minister, who quite recently has been having dialogue with rice farmers who are disgruntled over the $2,000 per bag price being offered by exporters, said it is an area still being explored. Discussions are ongoing with exporters and the Private Sector to take the lead, something which Persaud noted the Government had expected would have been done earlier. |
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