Anguillian Economist, Dr. Aidan Harrigan, speaking in his private capacity, says the 1967 Anguilla Revolution has produced good fruit resulting in the present economic development now being experienced on the island. Much is therefore owed to revolutionary leader Ronald Webster, Atlin Harrrigan and others.

Dr. Aidan Harrigan

He arrived at this conclusion after tracing the growth of Anguilla over the years from a backwater in the Caribbean during its political association with St. Kitts to a steadily developing island following the intervention by Britain in 1969 and the eventual formal separation of the island in 1980.

Dr. Harrigan was at the time delivering the 7th Annual Walter G. Hodge Memorial Anguilla Day Lecture on Tuesday, June 5th, at the House of Chandeliers. The topic of his address was “Fruits of the Anguilla Revolution: Economic Growth and Transformation 1967 to the Present.” He is the Permanent Secretary with responsibility for Economic Development, Investment, Commerce and Tourism, a position he has held in the Ministry of Finance since February 2006.

Some of the listeners including Mrs. Olive Hodge, wife of the late Walter Hodge

He gave a comprehensive analysis of the island’s growth rate in terms of its leap from a budget of just over $300,000 in 1966 under the St. Kitts Government to the staggering multi-million-dollar budgets in these days; a tourism-based economy growing so rapidly that Government has had to impose a moratorium on large foreign projects while allowing locally-owned projects to develop; and a soaring GDP resulting in a relatively high standard of living on the island.

At the outset of his lecture, Dr. Harrigan circulated a paper listing ten major resort and residential tourism projects approved or awaiting approval by Government. They range from the Frangipani Re-development and Expansion Project which is to provide 75 rooms to the 825-room KOR Group Savannah Bay/Sile Bay Project. The list shows that a total of 4,380 rooms have either been approved or under consideration and could come on stream between now and the year 2020. He observed that added to the present number of rooms the new developments would put the figure in the region of 5,000 rooms by 2020.

Harrigan said it was his personal opinion that stock should be taken about the likely implications of those projects which are expected to be of a four or five-star rating. He estimated that the projects could generate up to 8, 760 new jobs in direct employment once they become operational and another 4,000 jobs could be created as an indirect and induced effect of the expanding economic activity. He said it meant that labour would have to be imported to help operate the resorts and that the island’s population could double to 26,000 by the year 2020.

He called attention to the stresses that this would place on Anguilla’s physical, social and environmental infrastructure and the need for adjustment or for the people of the island to face the consequences.

He cautioned that if Anguilla “over-develops to the point that the physical and social capacity of the island to handle the level of development is inadequate, it would create a host of problems and cause the island to lose the very essence that made it attractive in the first place.”

In answering the question which he posed at the beginning of his lecture: ‘Has the Anguilla Revolution given good fruit’, he affirmed: “It certainly has.” He went on, “The period 1984 to 2003, for example, has shown that real per capita income increased by some 16.7 percent. However, real per capita income of US$5,000 is relatively modest when compared with that of our fellow UK Overseas Territories such BVI, Cayman Islands or Bermuda, all of whom have capital income in excess of US$15,000. Consequently, we have quite a way to travel.”

“Sometimes despite the best efforts the harvest of fruit is not what is anticipated or required. For example, during the period 1994 – 2003 because of the impact of hurricane and economic shocks, the harvest was not as bountiful. We have also seen, existing side by side, both sweet and bitter fruit particularly in recent years. The sweet is a rejuvenated economy since 2004. The bitter is the continuing escalation in the level and nature of crime. There are also worrying signs that our environment and what we have traditionally held dear in terms of the ownership of the resources, are also under threat.”

He said that his point of tracing the various stages of the island’s development was “to show that transformation is more than economic growth. For economic growth to translate into economic development and social transformation, we must also concern ourselves with to whom the benefits of economic growth go. Locals [persons] like the Gumbs and Lake and Kentish families continue the tradition of Anguillians participating as owners of the tourism industry.”

Dr. Harrigan further said: “As their projects get off the ground, other local families with significant property will seek to copy their example. However, a word of caution: property markets are notoriously fickle and Anguilla now competes with destinations all around the world for those seeking vacation homes. There is also the pressing point that whether foreign or local, large projects have extensive impacts – the accumulated effect of which, as I have indicated earlier, could lead to over-development and its attendant problems…”

“But to answer the fundamental question of whether the seeds that sprung from the Anguilla Revolution as the ultimate source of sustenance and rejuvenation are intact, the jury is still out. We are aware of what is at stake, and ultimately if we make the wrong choices, we would have more than ourselves to blame.”

“To my mind, all the social challenges… and other ills that we face are an opportunity for us to engage each other as Anguillians, to engage Government and to engage developers
…because we are all stakeholders in what happens to Anguilla. Think of the seeds that sprung from the fruit of the Anguilla Revolution as social capital which Mr. James Ronald Webster, our other founding fathers and all those who participated in the Revolution have bequeathed to us. We owe it to them, ourselves and the generations yet to come to grow this into an even bigger legacy and bountiful fruit.”

“We, Anguillians, have always been full of creativeness and ingenuity. However, we have no choice but to be that way because this was a matter or survival. The question is: ‘How motivated are we now to protect our heritage?’ Time will tell. The future lies squarely in our hands. We have to accept responsibility for it and hold each other accountable to make the right decisions to show that the dream of the Anguilla Revolution goes on.”

Editor’s Note
Dr. Harrigan has a Master’s Degree in Development Economics and International Finance from Dalhousie University and Glasgow Universities respectively and a PhD in Economics from Exeter University. His research interests include, inter alia, measuring the economic impact of tourism development, financial risk management products for use in the tourism industry and modelling the external accounts in small, open developing economies.

Dr. Harrigan, who has acted as Deputy Governor periodically from November last year, is the son of Mr George and Mrs Ursula Harrigan of East End.

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