Trust firms should pay into wealth fund — Skelton Cline

Political commentator Claude Skelton Cline has called for trust companies and marine businesses operating in the BVI to pay into a sovereign wealth fund intended to finance infrastructure, education and other long-term development needs.

Speaking on his Honestly Speaking programme, Skelton Cline argued that the two industries have generated substantial income through the territory over several decades without residents receiving what he considered a proportionate share of the benefits.

Skelton Cline linked his proposal to what he described as limited local participation at the highest levels of the financial-services industry.

“So they are making $200,000, $250,000 a year, half a million dollars a year. We give you a work permit. You come, you live your best life in the Virgin Islands,” Skelton Cline said. “The people at the very top who take home a million, $2 million in their partnerships, plus. And you know what locals get? The crumbs.”

The commentator argued that trust company executives have operated for years within their own global networks, hiring persons in the upper echelon. He claimed that local employees were sometimes required to train overseas recruits appointed to positions for which those very employees had been overlooked.

“You know for years now, the last three, four decades, these trust companies, the marine sectors, have made billions of dollars that flows through this country, through its legal instruments in particular,” Skelton Cline stated.

The Norway model

He proposed introducing a fee, developed in consultation with industry representatives, which businesses would pay directly into the fund. Skelton Cline said the fund should invest in the territory’s children and future generations. He identified education, professional training, roads, water, sewerage, and electricity as areas it should support.

He suggested examining Norway’s sovereign wealth fund as the BVI develops its model. He also proposed requiring other sectors and non-belonger landholders to contribute through separate fees.

Financial services remain the BVI’s leading source of government revenue, with the industry contributing nearly 70 per cent of the territory’s annual earnings. The territory has also faced calls to diversify its revenue sources because of international pressures affecting the sector.

Skelton Cline urged the current government to begin developing the proposed fund.

“Establishment of a sovereignty wealth fund — and the government, beginning with this government, should begin now to work on it, put the construct in place,” he stated.