St Lucia: Calls For The Hotel Sector To Buy More From Local Suppliers

Photo: Cabinet of Ministers. Courtesy: Caribbean Business Report.

There are calls from the private sector for policy that will ‘cause the hotel sector to buy a certain percentage of their consumption from local suppliers’.

This comes against the background of fears that the wider business community weren’t getting a fair share of the benefits of the tourism industry.

These calls were issued at a meeting between Cabinet and Private Sector Organizations last month. In a response Tourism Minister Dr. Ernest Hilaire ‘reminded the meeting that the recently implemented Revised Tourism Incentives Act, seeks to tie incentives and concessions to volume of local purchases’.

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Meanwhile Chamber members raised concerns over the impact of crime on business operations, the inability of the private sector to source skilled and reliable labor and high energy costs.

In its June newsletter the Chamber noted that while members appreciated outreach from the Ministry of Commerce there were observations that “many of the issues of concern to the Chamber are longstanding and well-known, yet it is the inaction on the part of the public sector that has made these issues ‘recurring’ topics of discussion”.

In his address Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre is quoted as touting the benefits of a Minimum Wage suggesting that “businesses may see an increased outlay in the first few months, but in the next few months, will see increased expenditure in their business as people, now with higher incomes will spend more”. (paraphrased).

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The Prime Minister took time to remind the meeting of the extensive investment in vehicles and other material support to the police which his government has and continues to provide in a response to rising crime.

One Private Sector agency spoke of the need to focus more effort at early childhood education as a key strategy in averting deviant behavior in later years.

SLISBA also spoke of its plan to rally its members to support a camera instalment program on island.

On the matter of difficulty in finding appropriate labor, Minister Hilaire discussed the challenges in continuity of programs geared towards upskilling citizens.

The Baker’s Association was extremely vocal regarding their inability to find adequately trained bakers.

  cabinet of ministers, Hotels, local suppliers, St. Lucia