In the past five years, the government of St. Vincent has generated minimal revenue from property sales on the Grenadine Island of Canouan.
On Wednesday, while speaking on state radio, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves disclosed this while speaking about his recent conversation with protesters and the acting manager for developers in the north of Canouan.
“For the last five years, the government has made hardly any money, a number approaching zero for alien landholding licenses and transfer taxes”.
According to Gonsalves, there exists available land for sale; but, developers are not actively promoting or pursuing sales.
“There are properties to be sold up there (in the north), and the developers are not pushing the sale; they are simply keeping the lands there within the company.”
According to Gonsalves, affluent landowners have privately disclosed their intention to postpone construction activities until the developers have addressed specific concerns.
“There are some people who have purchased land.” Some of them, wealthy people, have informed me that they will not build until certain aspects of their relationship with developers change. People are raising concerns about maintenance and other issues.”
Gonsalves said the government has managed to generate substantial money from Mustique, in contrast to Canouan, despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and volcanic eruptions.
“Because of what is going on in Mustique, the nature of what is going on there, and the vibrancy, the state has made approximately $100 million in the COVID year.” This is due to alien land holding licenses and transfer taxes with wealthy individuals, wealthy foreigners selling to wealthy foreigners.”
“The prices for properties skyrocketed, and the government remained in the slips and caught 17% of the value that was being sold. With 10% transfer taxes, five-on-five purchases on vendors, and basically 7% from the alien land holding license”.
Gonsalves stated on Wednesday that he saw none of this in Canouan.
