Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) Timothy Antoine has strongly encouraged a regional approach to the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) Programme.
He was speaking during a ‘Chew on it Luncheon’ held at the Fort Young Hotel on Wednesday.
The luncheon was hosted by the Dominica Association of Industry and Commerce (DAIC) under the theme: Transforming the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union Together – Dominica’s Scorecard.”
“We are strongly encouraging a regional approach to our Citizenship By Investment [CBI] Programme,” he said. “We understand the value of these programmes for the economies.”
Antoine continued, “If you think of it from a Dominican concept, where would Dominica be without CBI?”
According to him the CBI has played an enormous role in Dominica’s remarkable recovery to date.
“We have to protect it and for us to do that we believe that we ought to come together and have a common approach to due diligence,” he noted.
Antoine further explained that if an application gets denied in Dominica it cannot get approved in Antigua or vice versa, “because it is a single space and we have to protect all of us.”
Antoine mentioned also that pricing is important.
“If we come together we can probably raise the price and get more from the programme,” he explained. “If we don’t then we are competing…”
Antoine hopes the CBI lasts for a long time, “but who knows the future?”
“Therefore you have to deploy it in the productive sector, building resilience, reducing debt…,” he said.
Two things primarily hinder our progress.
1.Governments made up on less than adequate technical expertise in implementing projects and
2. A penchant among elected officials to enrich themselves through bribes and kickbacks.
The rest is a citizenry that ignore and are sometimes totally oblivious to the realities surrounding their own governmental processes, comfortable to remain “dejected subjects” to their Demagogues, allowing for exploited emotions in order to secure their own existence through a growing dependency.
So in all fairness though Mr. Antoine hopes that someone is listening, from the way things unfurl in these parts we will be having similar conversation 20 years from now. If you don’t believe it, just ask someone about Dominica 20 years ago, what has happened? Are we the General population better or worse off. ?
The damage has already been done. The correspondent banks have already taken their action.
“If you think of it from a Dominican concept, where would Dominica be without CBI?”
It can be argued that before CBI we were in a better state than what we are now.
Dominica recovered from Hurricane David, people utilized their own skills and resources, farmers earned a good living, they built their own homes on their own land, the health service was the envy of many other islands and Dominica was respected throughout the international community.
idk nuh but something tells me COVID-19 in Dominica already cause some people having coughs that going on for days now and it’s spreading…