Talk show host, Richard Courtney de Castro, felt the VI should encourage its Caribbean counterparts to encourage nationals from other countries and 'stop hassling the people'. Photo: VINO/File

de Casto also felt there is a need for a removal of barriers in the local environment to encourage businesses to set up shop in the Virgin Islands (VI) and this may involve changes in its tax structure. Photo: VINO/File

“We have to change our business environment and we have to have a serious conversation with ourselves about what we are doing and what we really want to be doing,” de Castro said on the Speak Your Mind show aired on November 2, 2013.

He remarked that the bottom line of being involved in business is to make money and if “we are going to continue to operate the way we’re operating, we’re definitely not be friendly to our allies,” he added.

De Castro was at the time making reference to a United Nations (UN) report dealing with the ease of doing business in various countries. According to the host, the VI was not mentioned in the report since it is not an independent country and not a member of the UN.

According to the talk show host, “we may have to break down some of our tax structures we may have to remove some of the barriers that we have to doing business if we’re going to be transparent and have good governance…”

“If we’re going to take away all the barriers for some people and let those barriers remain for our people, I think we have to change that policy immediately. I think that calls for immediate action,” he said.

He added that barriers should also be removed for our young people who want to start businesses and remove them from persons who are coming with “multi-million dollar pie in the sky hotel projects which may or may never get built”.

After thinking of some of the trade barriers existing within the territory, taxes and duties, etc, de Castro said he felt the VI would sit somewhere in the middle of the report.

“We have our own issues here to deal with that we need to look at more seriously, in terms of being fair and being open and being honest and transparent,” he said.

He noted that there is a definite push to have these things accomplished within the Caribbean region.

“While we’re talking about freedom of movement of people and single pass, the Virgin Islands, I’m purporting that both the US and British Virgin Islands have been out front in allowing people to migrate to these places and to set up shop and to provide for their families in a very extended way,” de Castro said.

According to de Castro this is nothing new to the VI as the territory has been in the forefront of accepting other countries, “we only have to look at the makeup of the Virgin Islands and you can see that it is a very diverse, culturally rich environment and the only way you could get that is the way we’ve been in the past – very open minded and very cosmopolitan in our approach.”

He felt the VI should encourage its Caribbean counterparts to encourage nationals from other countries and “stop hassling the people”.

“Stop making it difficult for the movement of people, we’re all from planet earth,” de Castro advised, “we have to break down some of these barriers and the more of them we get broken down the better.”