On March 24, Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre presented his Government’s Estimates for Revenue and Expenditure for Fiscal Year 2026-2027 of EC $2.1 Billion.
This amount will help continue bailing the government and people out of debt and developing new programs, while further developing delivery of health, education, infrastructure, agriculture, social and community services.
But even though it’s the biggest budget ever presented and reports another incredible year of growth, like all before, it’s still not anywhere close-enough to address the continuing problems affecting income generation and increasing capital expenditures, payments of Public Servants’ salaries and pensions, backpay, local and foreign debts, public assistance programs, etc.
One day of the continuing war on Iran costs US $1 Billion – to launch missiles, torpedo ships, bomb military targets, destroy energy infrastructure, cluster-bomb civilian communities, shoot rockets at residential buildings, obliterate universities and hospitals, blast schools and health centres to smithereens, launch airborne attacks on praying and protesting crowds, massacre religious and government leaders, kill and maim thousands and displace millions.
Today, US $25 Billion will have been expended doing 25 times the damage of the first day, yet, even while proclaiming victory, Washington’s warmongers are seeking an additional US $200 Billion to keep the fighting going.
As of March 2026, the United States has approved over-US $16.5 Billion in military sales to Gulf allies ‘to bolster their defenses against Iran and its proxies’.
These ‘emergency sales’ are ‘intended to strengthen air defense networks in the region following Iranian drone and missile strikes.’
But then, as per above, the billion-a-day calculation is solely restricted to costs of armaments and does not include the human, material and other costs of the damage caused daily.
Not included are the costs of rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure, the over 1,400 lives taken and 81,000 civilian targets hit (in Iran alone), plus the costs to the Gulf States of hosting the US bases from which Iran is attacked, the hidden damage in Israel, the daily killing and bombardment — with restrictions — on 100,000 Lebanese villages.
The damages also extend to ongoing costs to nations and people globally not involved but paying the energy costs, especially at fuel pumps – and even without the continuing global energy costs, can really amount to no-less-than one trillion US dollars.
The amounts involved defies arithmetical calculations and are beyond the imagination of the average Caribbean citizen.
But just imagine if those finding it war would approve a reparations repayment plan of annually making only the cost of armaments available to small islands and developing states.
Imagine what Saint Lucia would be able to do and say, if US $1 billion (over-EC $2.5 Billion) was donated as a unilateral international compensation package?
But this US administration’s first step was to remove the US $40 Billion that made USAID the world’s biggest overseas aid program and pull the US out of over 140 international United Nations (UN) agencies that most developing nations depend on.
Likewise, most of the richest European Union (EU) member-states have consciously cut local social spending to increase spending in the name of security and defence, to fund NATO’s backing of Ukraine in a war it cannot win.
But since Saint Lucia got a £52 Million Golden Handshake from Britain at Independence in 1979 (after centuries of Colonialism, Slavery and Imperial domination), the UK Treasury’s contributions by way of direct or multilateral international aid have (for 47 years) been gradually and comparatively reduced by valued equity from pounds to shillings — and now pence,
Today, the US and UK are allied in their expressions of infused exceptionalism, each flexing their immigration and visa entry muscles to subject small Caribbean islands with Citizenship by Investment Programs (CIPs) to hard-nosed competition in the global passport-selling business.
With the Caribbean’s island nations offering full citizenship worldwide for as little as US $100,000 the EU states involved (including the UK) and the US are offering limited-citizenship Golden Passports for up-to one billion US dollars.
Today, Washington and Brussels have each hauled-up their drawbridges to keep Caribbean immigrants at bay, among the millions from poor nations who accepted their open invitations to seek asylum in the North from dictatorship in ‘failed states’.
Waves of global crises and war events have repeatedly worsened the Caribbean’s economic circumstances:
• The 1992 removal by the World Trade Organization (WTO) of the preferential treatment Caribbean bananas historically enjoyed on the European market
• Imported inflation from the COVID Pandemic and its related Supply Chain challenges
• The Ukraine War’s economic sanctions
• President Trump’s recent Tariff Wars
The world continues to be unfriendly to the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Global South, as seen by the acquiescing silence of Washington’s partners after the US actions in Venezuela on January 3 and the subsequent naval blockade against Cuba.
Iran is understandably demanding Reparations for War Damages from the US before yielding to calls for ending a war it didn’t start, attacked from bases in neighbouring countries that never expected to have to pay in material costs.
That’s also why the Caribbean and developing nations everywhere must increasingly engage in closer horizontal geopolitical and international economic cooperation.
However, they must also all start looking inward, searching and finding the added valuable reserves — most hidden in plain sight — to create the systematic and sustainable approaches that will start opening ways to resilient prosperity in a new world where wealth is no longer measured only by GDP (Gross Domestic Product), but also by that bequeathed by Nature.
Just as Climate Change and Regime Change are accelerating globally, so must governments accelerate their rates of adaptation to the changed realities confronting Humanity in every place and space.
And this isn’t about if, but when people, everywhere affected, again (as always) start another new wave of collective resistance to dictatorship, disguised as democracy and desperate diabolical efforts to save a crumbling empire led by a naked emperor!