20 Apr Interview with E.P. Chet Greene, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Immigration and Trade, Antigua and Barbuda
A recent visit from Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, to the United Arab Emirates and Citizenship by Investment Unit’s (CIU) new office opening in Dubai shows the importance of United Arab Emirates investment and trade opportunities for Antigua and Barbuda. What are your expectations in this respect?
The move to open the CIU office in the UAE is a strategic intervention by Antigua and Barbuda as we continue to identify and project ourselves as a Caribbean gateway in terms of logistics, tourism and investment. For too long there has been a divide. With the type of investment opportunities in Antigua and Barbuda, we think that we are attractive and that we can be the Dubai of the Caribbean. Therefore, this is a crucial step for us with respect to building the trust in investing in Antigua and Barbuda.
Could you comment on the prospects of re-engaging Emirates for a direct flight to Antigua and Barbuda?
Indeed, we have had ongoing discussions about a direct flight. With this new move to have a resident ambassador in the UAE, the opening of CIU office and with other business activities, positioning ourselves as a natural logistics and investments hub for the Caribbean region makes sense. Based on our strategic location in the Caribbean Island chain, Antigua and Barbuda is the first stop for long-haul flights from the Middle East. Then feeder flights would be used to move passengers across the Eastern Caribbean islands. This is a developmental model which we are following, and we are grateful that Expo 2020 is taking place because it allows us to showcase and to really give life to a plan that we have had for some time. We are definitely going to be leveraging all that we can with an eye on building Antigua and Barbuda as a strong logistics gateway for the Caribbean. The timing is perfect, and we want to applaud the Dubai model. There are many elements that we can employ with respect to national development and by extension to contribute to Caribbean growth, because our mission is also a regional mission.
What are the competitive advantages of Antigua and Barbuda’s Citizenship by Investment Program? What investments are you prioritizing and how is the program contributing to Antigua and Barbuda’s GDP growth?
Since the program started back in 2014, it has been a major staple within the context of the Antigua and Barbuda’s economy. That has grown exponentially in the pandemic as traditional tourism has begun to recede. Why should anyone choose Antigua and Barbuda over any other countries in the world? We can provide safety and accessibility. Just look at our track record in the way we managed Covid-19 pandemic. This is a testament to the significant capacity of these small islands to deal with a challenge of universal proportions. Our CBI program has an easy 1-2-3, A-B-C kind of approach through real estate or study at university. The University of the West Indies has just opened its fourth campus and we have fashioned the program around to show that there are areas of investment that can be made to continue the development of education in Antigua and Barbuda and by extension to the greater Caribbean.
We pride ourselves on the user-friendliness of the programme. However, although we are open to the world, we remain tremendously careful with respect to the quality of the applications that we accept and ultimately approve. When you are a citizen, you want to make sure that those who are alongside you as fellow citizens instill in you the level of trust and responsibility in how they behave and conduct business. Our team has been built with the highest standards of professionalism. I have yet to encounter anyone who has attained citizenship who has not lauded the various interactions they have had with our staff at the unit. As you know, we are a nation that prides ourselves on tourism and it is the most essential element of our economy. We see this program as a variation or a natural extension of our tourism offering. This one allows people not only to visit, but to also live, work, and be a part of the nation.
Of course, the Antigua and Barbuda’s passport is incredibly strong which gives additional advantages to those that come here on the CBI program. In short, we have a globally ready program which allows successful applicants to be citizens and wield a passport from a country which is reputed to be a democratic country, one that prides itself on following the rule of law, and which demonstrably provides safety and familial comfort. I would like to take this opportunity to invite your audience to consider the Antigua and Barbuda programme as a forerunner within the global constellation of CBI programs.
In July this year you presented Antigua and Barbuda’s Voluntary Nation Review of its progress toward the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to the UN’s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. You have also embarked on a campaign to achieve the SDGs and to build greater resilience. It includes the creation of a National Adaptation Plan to assess climate risks in infrastructural development, food security and tourism. Could you please comment on this more?
The SDGs are indeed extremely near and dear to us. As we speak, the COP26 in Glasgow is about to open its doors, and of course the climate issue will be the central focus in the forum. Our presentation to the UN clearly speaks to our fierce commitment as a part of a global movement, recognizing that there are certain challenges when it comes to our communal residency that need collective intervention and shared responsibility if we are going to have any hope in correcting the ills and to moving forward. Rest assured, we are all considered a part of humanity with a shared home which is our planet.
As we look at climate issues, we look at food security and tourism. These issues are crucial in the context of a small developing nation like Antigua and Barbuda. Regarding tourism, unless you adopt an adequate and globally respected environment of policies and principles, any tourism efforts are for nothing. How can you invite someone to come if you have acidification of the ocean? We have seen that, unless we keep global warming below 1.5 degrees, small island states will be wiped out entirely, so we are quite cognizant of our situation and as you can imagine extremely concerned about the emissions. It is our hope that COP26 will be a platform from which a global agreement will emerge about a shared rulebook, for example, as well as that a number of other globally sensitive topics will be discussed and agreed upon, so that small nations like ours will not have to go through the cycle that we are currently enduring. Every time we have climate degradation, it sets our development back by decades. We know the correlation between hurricanes, flooding and climate change. Nothing said at COP26 is new information. What is needed there as a new component is a global concentrated response to attack the issue of climate change.
What potential exports might Antigua and Barbuda target with an eye on economy’s diversification plans?
We are now very aggressively promoting the concept of free trade zones and value-added production. I am pleased to inform your readers of our new development in the port expansion project in Antigua and Barbuda. We have a brand-new cargo facility that will support the vision of establishing Antigua and Barbuda as a logistics hub and a gateway to the Caribbean. This new cargo terminal will have facilities and amenities to receive cargo coming into the region with smaller vessels transshipping cargo from Antigua and Barbuda. We are also in discussions about repositioning the terminal of the airport into a logistics hub with modern arrangements for small packages shipped to Antigua and Barbuda that can be redirected into other Caribbean countries. The whole issue of logistics is something we are exploring very seriously. Small light manufacturing is another area of diversification of the economy. To answer your question, our trade mission fits perfectly into Expo 2020 and our vision going forward.
The government’s strategy is to ‘’build forward stronger’’ after the pandemic. How do you see Antigua and Barbuda’s economy in the aftermath of the pandemic, since the independence, and in the next five to 10 years?
I would start by highlighting the fact that we have had significant gains between 2014 and 2020, when the pandemic hit. I must admit, it naturally set us back. If we are anything, we are resilient people, so we were not going to succumb to the crisis. We have continued to find creative ways to reposition the economy and produce opportunities for our people. The way I see the economy going is a rebranding of Antigua and Barbuda into a logistic hub and gateway to the Caribbean. We have always punched above our weight and we hope to do so even more now. In every challenge there is an equal or greater opportunity. This is how we see the pandemic. Medical tourism is definitely an area that we are looking at as well.
We are also doing quite a number of things at the same time to reposition the world tourism market. For example, we have gone into an NDR programme where we give an extended stay, two-year visits to new digital nomads coming to Antigua and Barbuda. This is a new dimension to tourism. It is no longer just hotel stayovers or cruise tourists. We have added this new variety of people who can work away from home. They find us attractive because they can work from the beach with their laptop or smartphone.
So, these are all the things we are doing in this transition: transforming the economy, responding to the challenges of Covid, while at the same time embracing the new opportunities that come along with it. For instance, when it comes to the manufacturing of facemasks, which will be around for some time, we will be cutting off one area of importation which affects all medical installations. Before Covid, healthcare workers were already using facemasks. It was a part of their day-to-day uniform. We now have the capacity to make these masks ourselves, thereby reducing a level of outgoing cash flow towards the importation of those items.
We have also just built an additional berth for cruise tourism, so we can now accommodate the largest cruise ships in the world here in Antigua and Barbuda. All of these things are to position the economy on a new footing so that by the time we emerge from Covid, we will not be scampering about looking for opportunities. Rather, we will be using these times to build new platforms, incentivize the economy and to offer new opportunities to our people. We have a clear vision for growth.
Prime Minister Browne leads where a vision of the country’s development is concerned, even with respect to the vaccine mandate. We are mandated to be vaccinated as public servants because we realize our dependency on tourism. If we are going to get a pole position in tourism and be ahead of the pack, we have to be in a position to receive visitors. While other countries closed their borders, Antigua and Barbuda did not. What we did was to train our workers to deal with the emergence of the pandemic and our sparse numbers of cases are thanks to our medical professionals.
We are well aware of our dependence on the tourism sector. Of all the countries in the world in the tourist trade, we rank somewhere in the top nine. Therefore, we could not pretend that we did not understand our own challenges with respect to managing the pandemic or the expectations of the livelihoods of our people. We first insisted on reopening the country for business and projected that message to the world as well as the message that our citizens were inoculated. Visitors don’t have to be afraid, for they are entering a sterilized environment where people are vaccinated and open for business. We also did that to ensure that when the rest of the world reopens and along with that, the travel trade, that we would be out in front. Historically, when people would go online to book their vacation, the most important thing they look for is safety. Safety in the pre-pandemic era translated into the ability to walk the streets and to socialize. Safety nowadays also includes remaining safe in terms of the pandemic. One wants to go to a destination where they are the most unlikely to fall ill. To ensure this, we have reinforced our medical facilities. We opened the first infectious disease center in Antigua and Barbuda and the first in the Eastern Caribbean. That again was a response to Covid-19, but by having it in place, we are now well positioned for any future contagions that might affect not only the Caribbean but the world and our people. We also opened a new 75-bed hospital to make certain that we have the capacity to deal with visitors who may from time to time come down with Covid or any other illness. Our medical platform is robust enough to deal with both our nationals and our tourists alike.
We are open and ready for business; we have built the necessary institutions; and we are now waiting for the world to come and enjoy Antigua and Barbuda, be it through the traditional tourism platforms—our cruises and overnight stays—the digital nomad program, or through the CBI initiative. Remember that our broadband is strong enough to enable people to work from the water’s edge, although, as you know, “The beach is just the beginning.”
Do you have a final message for our readers?
Antigua and Barbuda exists within the global constellation of destinations as a well-respected country with a pristine image. Again, we are a country that is welcoming to our guests. We want them to know that laws are respected and revered, safety is assured with platforms built especially to cater to the health needs of anyone who comes to Antigua and Barbuda who might be infected with Covid-19. In short, what we have is a country that is ready for business.
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