St. Vincent’s Finance Minister Camilo Gonsalves asserts that the government is undertaking unprecedented construction efforts. They are continuously refining strategies to optimize capital expenditure, and, barring unforeseen disasters in 2025, the government projects it will have spent over $2 billion in capital expenditure during this term.
Gonsalves made these remarks during the presentation of the supplementary appropriation bill, amounting to $98.5 million, emphasizing that “Capital expenditure builds infrastructure and resilience, creates jobs, and stimulates economic growth.”
“There was a time, not so long ago, when spending $95 million in five months would have been beyond the competence and capacity of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In 2000, the last full year of the NDP administration, they managed to spend a paltry $35 million of the entire capital budget. Even adjusted for inflation, that would amount to between $50 and $60 million for the entire year.”
Gonsalves noted that last year’s final figures revealed the government spent $578 million on its capital program. “That’s more than ten times what the NDP spent in their last year, even accounting for inflation,” Gonsalves stated.
“In our first four years of this term—2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024—this government has invested $1.5 billion in capital expenditure. No other five-year period in St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ budgeting history even approaches an expenditure of $1.5 billion in four years.”
“And when this year is tallied, assuming we avoid another disaster—because we’ve faced so many in such a short period—all things being equal, this government will have spent over $2 billion in capital expenditure in one term in office.”
Gonsalves clarified that these figures do not include the additional billion dollars invested by the private sector in capital projects.
