St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the Argyle International Airport (AIA) were featured in the third edition of a textbook, widely-used in colleges and universities in Canada, entitled Introduction to International Development Studies: Approaches, Actors, and Issues published by Oxford University Press in 2016.
One Chapter of the book, captioned “Free Trade, Fair Trade, and South-South Trade”, in which St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Argyle International Airport were discussed, was authored by Professor Gavin Fridell, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in International Development Studies, at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
In this Chapter, Professor Fridell highlighted a “Critical Issues Box” on page 297 of the book, under the rubric “South-South Cooperation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.” This “Box” reads as follows:
“The ‘rise of the South’ has brought with it a renewed interest in ‘a proactive developmental state’ not just among the largest southern economies, but also among smaller more vulnerable ones (UNDP, 2013:4). One unique example of this has been St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where the government of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, in office since 2001, has boosted public spending on social programs (e.g. education and health care) and physical infrastructure (e.g., roads and low-income housing) to combat the negative impacts of the global economic recession and the decline of traditional industries, in particular bananas, which had thrived on the basis of a preferential agreement with the EU until it as quashed by the WTO in the 2000s.
“In the wake of declining preferential supports from northern governments, SVG has found increasing assistance from southern partners, including through membership in ALBA. Most notably, since 2008, Venezuela and Cuba have provided SVG with millions of dollars of assistance and soft loans to construct a new international airport design to promote fresh opportunities for trade, tourism, and services. An estimated $112 million of this assistance ___ over 40% of the cost of the airport ___ comes mostly in the form of “in-kind” support, including the engineering services, heavy machinery, wind stations, and an on-site laboratory. Additional support has come from other, non-ALBA, countries, including grants and loans from Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Iran, and Libya, and a free Airport Master Plan approved by Mexico (Fridell, 2013; Gonsalves, 2012).
The airport is due for completion by the end of 2016. While projects such as this may not be able to overcome the vulnerability experienced by small island states in a highly uneven global economy, they do point to new and original forms of South-South cooperation that challenge the northern-based consensus around free-trade, while supporting governments developing southern-based alternatives to it.”
In a letter to Prime Minister Ralph E. Gonsalves, dated February 13, 2017, Professor Fridell congratulated the Prime Minister and all Vincentians on the “wonderful achievement” of the Argyle International Airport.
