WILL ST LUCIA REOPEN THE DOOR TO CHINA?

As the election campaign draws nigh, both the magnitude and intensity of the Ti Canal projects increase. As you drive around Choiseul/Saltibus and Laborie, you can’t miss the proliferation of men, women and even children working along the roadside on Ti canal projects. Even Bousquet’s blog editor has jumped on the Ti Canal bandwagon, busy with his “weed whacker” cutting grass along the Balembouche stretch.

Somehow, Ti Canal has eclipsed all the big projects. If Les Paradis is fast becoming a monument of failure, then the Rick Carlton Hotel Project is an outright failure! Apparently, the hotel sector is underwater; but Bousquet is touting about a new hotel at River Doree; all the fuss about the mini-stadium died a natural death, with no knowledge of the whereabouts of the Moroccan/Portuguese Fund to build it.

What about the HIA project? No sign of anything happening at the airport; hardly a construction project anywhere; some of the tertiary roads are in a terrible condition: the Cartin Road remains in terrible condition and so are parts of the Grace-woodlands road.

Thanks to the revolution in infrastructure that Kenny undertook that left us with a legacy of a decent road network.

It is eleven (11) months after Tomas and the backlog of critical retrofitting works in Saltibus, Daban and Gertrine remains phenomenal. Except for the recent works that recently started by Moses disco (Saltibus), nothing else has happened.

When we need major a major infrastructural development programme that will stimulate and sustain our economy, all we get is a proliferation of Ti canal projects, especially in the South.

China is now not only a savior for the USA, Britain and the EU countries; it is the world’s economic savior. It has now heeded a call from CARICOM and has agreed to pump one billion dollars (US) into our economies – an opportunity that St. Lucia may well miss because of our “daft diplomacy” and a propensity to put self before country.

CARICOM consists of fifteen (15) member states. Ten (10) member states have diplomatic relations with China and five (5) with Taiwan.

According to the Chinese official, under the Caribbean Development Fund, “China will provide one billion US dollars in loans and preferential nature to the Caribbean countries in support of local economic development.” In addition, no “less than 2,500 training opportunities for Caribbean countries and 30 opportunities with Masters Degrees for Caribbean professionals to study in China” will be provided.

Moreover, China will also “help the in-house capabilities of Caribbean countries fight natural disasters and that Beijing would provide support in the building of seismic and tsunami early warning and monitoring networks”

If the fund were to be distributed equally among the 10 CARICOM countries with diplomatic relations with China, each country would receive 270 million dollars worth of aid.

The countries that enjoy diplomatic relations with Taiwan are Belize, Haiti, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.  Taiwan has diplomatic relations with a total of 23 countries, Except for the Vatican, all of these countries are poor third world countries mostly from the Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. None of the more developed countries of CARICOM has diplomatic relations like Taiwan.