BVI Premier Presented Budget for This Year

British Virgin Islands Premier and Minister of Finance Dr D Orlando Smith presented BVI budget for the current fiscal year, of just over US$330 million. The budget of the previous year was US$311 million. The budget of fiscal year 2016 is one of the largest budgets presented by any of governments in the region, and the first since Smith’s party won in general elections held this year.

On February 8, BVI Premier presented his budget speech in the House of Assembly, where stated that projections for recurrent spending have been placed at $286,512,400, in addition to projected revenues of exactly $330,846,500.

BVI Takes Part in a Study on Diversification of Caribbean OCTs

The British Virgin Islands is taking part in a regional study on diversification of the Caribbean countries, launched in November last year by the EU-funded Caribbean Overseas Small and Medium Enterprises Programme. The purpose of the study is to determine if the economies of the Caribbean Overseas Territories need diversification, and give recommendations how to do it.

BVI Premier and minister of finance, Dr Orlando Smith, noted that the study is in line with BVI government’s economic strategy to diversify the long term sustainability of current and emerging sectors of the economy.
 
The main objective of Caribbean Overseas Small and Medium Enterprises i(COSME) s improving the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises in the British, Dutch and French OCTs by facilitating enhanced business enabling environment. Among the beneficiary countries there are BVI, Anguilla, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.