Double salary economically efficient – PM Drew
PAYMENT OF ‘13th MONTH’ OR DOUBLE SALARY will help stimulate the St Kitts and Nevis economy assured Prime Minister Dr Terrance Drew this week.
“You as public servants…have worked hard. You have put yourselves out there and I think that you needed to have been shown, in a tangible way, that we appreciate that,” PM Drew said, justifying his government’s decision.
“But in addition to that, our aim is also to stimulate the economy, to get to people so that they can have a good Christmas, people can spend to help businesses and help all around so that all of us would benefit from that injection into the economy,” the PM explained.
Civil Servants, Government Auxiliary Employees (GAEs), Pensioners and STEP were beneficiaries of the Labour administration’s gesture given this week “to stimulate the economy.”
It was noted that PM, while speaking on WINNFM’s Voices programme today, Wednesday, November 23, disclosed that the payment of the extra month’s salary, or a ‘double salary’ as it is colloquially termed, was also made to help stimulate the Federation’s economy.
Drew, who is also Finance Minister, said the rationale behind the extra month’s salary was also to reward government employees who were on the frontline in the relentless fight against the highly-contagious and deadly Covid-19 Pandemic which killed more than six million globally.
He doesn’t feel the extra payments will hurt the country’s economy, but be part of the Federation’s overall diversification efforts.
“We’re going to hit hard in the construction field, in tourism. We are going to diversify the economy so that we are not so heavily dependent on the CBI Citizenship by Investment) alone. You can have CBI, you can have tourism, you have construction, you can have agriculture, you can have energy, you can have financial services and you can have the offshore education sector and so forth,” Dr Drew said.
His administration is looking at utilise several strategies to continue enhancing and growing the economy, the PM explained.
So, we are looking at multiple aspects of the economy that we can develop to make sure that we are receiving the necessary revenues to continue the social programmes and to keep us stable and strong,” Dr Drew said.
