Skelton Cline accuses RiteWay for cannibalising BVI market

Outspoken talk show host Claude Skelton Cline has accused RiteWay, its Canadian parent company The North West Company, and several other major businesses of “cannibalising” the BVI economy, claiming successive governments have failed to protect consumers and small businesses from monopolistic practices.

Speaking recently on his Honestly Speaking radio show, Skelton Cline argued that the absence of antitrust legislation has allowed large corporations to dominate both wholesale and retail markets, driving up the cost of living while steadily pushing locally owned businesses out of the marketplace.

“They are cannibalising the market,” Skelton Cline declared. “It is legal, but it is immoral; it is legal, but it’s unethical.” He singled out The North West Company, which acquired a majority stake in the RiteWay supermarket chain in 2017, alleging the company enjoys an unfair advantage by operating in both the wholesale and retail grocery sectors. He claimed the lack of competition laws allows dominant businesses like RiteWay to secure exclusive distribution rights for popular brands, leaving smaller retailers with little choice but to buy products at prices set by their competitors.

“You have to buy from them and then compete against them in the same market,” he argued. “They wipe out the small and middle mom-and-pop shops.” 

Other accused businesses

To make matters worse, Skelton Cline said the monopoly issue extends well beyond the grocery trade. He accused Caribbean Cellars of dominating alcohol distribution while competing in the retail market and questioned the concentration of ownership in the fuel industry involving SOL, Delta and Sunoco. He also singled out the insurance sector, saying the practice persists there as well.

“The whole system is rigged,” he said, arguing that too much control over essential goods and services is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies. He also criticised governments past and present, saying elected officials have allowed what he described as monopolistic practices to flourish by failing to introduce meaningful competition laws.

“The only people who can stop this are the government,” he said. “Government issues these licences. Government knows these practices are happening, and government is not doing anything about it.”

Expanding into new sectors

Skelton Cline rejected arguments that large multinational companies have lowered prices for consumers, saying residents have yet to see meaningful savings despite repeated promises.

Instead, he argued that local entrepreneurs are being squeezed out while overseas corporations continue expanding into new sectors, threatening the Virgin Islands’ long-standing culture of local business ownership. 

“They (RiteWay) were even trying to get into the lumber business,” Skelton Cline argued. “Clarence Thomas has been fighting for years now to stop that from happening. In other words, they want to be like Walmart in the U.S but this is not the United States of America, and it couldn’t happen there the same way.”

He urged all 13 elected representatives to introduce antitrust legislation to curb what he described as the growing dominance of multinational corporations, warning that failure to act would continue to erode opportunities for Virgin Islanders to own and grow businesses in their own country.