In order to recover from Hurricane Beryl’s devastation, the St. Vincent government will seek parliamentary approval for funds totaling close to $140 million in Eastern Caribbean Dollars.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves announced that the Standing Committee of Finance of the House of Assembly would convene to consider a supplementary estimate and a supplementary appropriation bill to go to Parliament on Thursday.
Gonsalves said this is the first set of supplementary estimates and a supplementary appropriation bill for this stage of addressing the disaster and the consequences of Hurricane Beryl.
“We did the same thing when we had the pandemic in 2020 and the volcanic eruptions in 2021. The first supplementary we went with after the volcano was about $117 million; we’d be at a number close to 140 million this time. And both on the recurrent and on the capital side. And there are many of the existing programmes in the current budget. We will use resources there in a manner that is reflective of the challenge with which we are faced in consequence of Beryl.”
“For instance, in the budget itself, we had $30 million for housing, but clearly the bulk of that has to be directed to some people who still remain after the volcanic eruptions in the red zone and who still want their housing appropriately satisfied. And of course, for those who are now severely damaged or whose houses are devastated, we probably have more houses now than at the time of the volcanic eruptions.”
“On Thursday, we are going for an increase in the overdraft limit by about $25 million. We’re going to raise the loan ceiling by about $75 million. The reality is that during this specific phase, we need to allocate additional funds and obtain loans”.
According to Gonsalves, the extent of economic growth has moderated the debt to GDP, and the government is currently taking steps to facilitate this growth. But there are real challenges.
“There are real challenges, and then you have a medium-term trajectory in relation to the debt to make sure it’s manageable. I can’t say that I’m not going to incur any more debt, but the result of not doing that is that I will have a lot of ‘deaths”.
Gonsalves said there’s a lot of focus on relief and cleaning up, and these are early steps in the stages of recovery; however, the government will have to go back to the house for additional appropriations.
