Economy declined by 17.5% in 2020

COVID-19 has hit hard in St Vincent and the Grenadines resulting in the economy declining by 17.6 per cent along with the closure of 420 businesses.

This is in addition to some 2,754 job losses across all sectors between March and December 2020, which represents almost five per cent of the entire workforce. The approximate size of the labour force in St Vincent and Grenadine is 58,000 persons.

Finance Minister Camillo Gonsalves, who made the announcement of the impact of COVID-19 on the economy in Parliament last week, highlighted the brutality of COVID-19 on the local economy. He pointed to certain interim situations resulting in some people being brought on the job.

Government’s income support measures

The finance minister zoomed in on the government’s implementation of  several income support measures to cushion the fall off in employment income experienced by these individuals.

“There are other employees who have not been laid off but put on reduced time schedules, particularly in the hospitality sector – reduced hours and the like, they are also receiving compensation through various income support measures,” Gonsalves explained.

The Finance Minister was speaking in parliament in responding to a question from Member of Parliament for East Kingstown, Dwight Fitzgerald Bramble.

He added, “in terms of the subset that the honourable member asked for, it’s 420 businesses.  But more businesses than that have been affected in terms of limited hours and limited staff and the like, but the question was about closure”.

Private sector warns about lock down

Amid a spike in COVID-19 cases among locals, the private sector is insisting that any decision to introduce lockdown measures be based on facts and not emotion, even as it warned that a shutdown of the country could cause more pain than the pandemic itself.

Tony Regisford, executive director of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Chamber of Industry and Commerce, reported that shutting down the economy could have far-reaching implications and is not a decision that should be made in “an irrational or emotional way”.

He warned that if there was a lockdown “without putting everything in the balance, we could be creating more pain in the medium term than the COVID itself”.

Since December 28, 2020, 120 cases of COVID-19 have been recorded among nationals with no local travel history.

However, the Ministry of Health has not used the term “community spread” amid the development, saying that the cases are under investigation and that five clusters have been identified. Since March 11, 2020, when the global outbreak of COVID-19 was deemed a pandemic, St Vincent and the Grenadines has detected 249 cases of the highly contagious virus.