Premier Dr Natalio Wheatley says that Virgin Islanders can rest assured that when he goes out seeking a loan in the interest of the Territory’s development or recovery, he will not be putting the soul of the BVI on the line.
Wheatley, at the time, was responding to questions surrounding his government’s position on the United Kingdom Loan Guarantee and Whether the Territory would be in a better position now if the Government had accepted. This came following his statements that meeting the demands of the public for infrastructural works would require money.
“We want to borrow, but we don’t want to sell our soul to borrow”, he said. “Of course, you borrow money, you have to pay back plus interest. We’ll look for the best rate possible”.
Wheatley has reiterated that the position of the Virgin Islands’ Government on the loan guarantee is a result of unreasonable conditions attached to the guarantee.
“The challenge that was had with the loan guarantee had to do with the conditions attached to the guarantee”, he said.
“I don’t think that when you have somebody who’s down… they’ve been destroyed by hurricanes, you should be attaching some of the conditions”, he added.
Previously, Wheatley had indicated that not taking the loan guarantee would not affect procurement procedures for small-scale projects due to take place in the near future, as the government had already determined that the sum of the loan offer was much too high to be taken for those purposes.
At the time he did note however, that the money may be sought out once again when the government is confronted by the demands of funding major projects such as the airport expansion.