BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation (SIDF) can be accessed during 2012 by persons having difficulty procuring their own home and those who are seeking to establish small businesses.
This was the promise made by Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, the Right Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas during the first edition (Jan. 10) of his radio programme ‘Ask the PM’.
He said the Foundation had been “an extraordinary important source of funding and stabilisation in areas as far afield as tourism and education, agriculture and housing, the environment and beyond”, especially in times when “traditional international donors are at the edges of their own financial precipices”.
The Prime Minister explained that one of the top priorities of his government has and continues to be expanded is home ownership, in light of which arrangements have been or are being made for persons who experience hardship in securing the down payment for their home.
“What can we expect in the months ahead? In those cases, therefore, where low income prospective homeowners are encountering difficulty in producing the down payment, the Sugar Diversification Foundation will work with the Development Bank to make this a possibility. The ordinary people of this country must at last be the owners of appreciating assets.”
Describing small businesses as “the cornerstone of any economy”, the Finance Minister explained that the Foundation would be available to provide assistance to new entrepreneurs.
“In addition, I know that our country contains a number of competent energetic and reliable individuals with great ideas, well thought out business plans but no resources with which to put those plans into action. The sugar diversification foundation will also be used as a source of funding for competent reliable up-and-coming entrepreneurs.”
The public has been invited to educate itself about the SIDF by familarising “yourselves with the many ways in which this Foundation has time and again been an absolute lifeline for our Federation in this time of global upheaval, and we ask you to do this by perusing the audited financial statements that we have asked be prepared and made accessible to you”.
