UPP Senator Browne tells Administration to come clean on YIDA deal and reported sale of Guiana Island

United Progressive Party Senator Alex Browne is calling on the
Browne Administration to provide information on Yida Zhang, since
there are reports that Guiana Island has been sold and the Chinese
investor has left the country.

The Antigua Labour Party had boasted, for years, about the millions
of dollars the investor would pump into the economy based on his
development of the offshore island. 

Now, Browne says he is hearing reports – which he is still trying to
verify – that Yida has sold off large tracts of land in the special
economic zone.

If this is, in fact, the case, Browne says, then the Government and, by
extension, the taxpayers have gotten nothing from the sale of the
island in taxes – based on the agreement with the investor.
He notes that, as part of the deal, the Government had to ensure that
all the infrastructure was in place for the investor, at the expense of
taxpayers.

According to Browne, the YIDA project has also caused damage to
the mangroves – which the Browne Administration had defended –
and, after the deed, is apparently walking away from the project. 

Browne says that, during the initial phase of the project, fishermen
and other persons were barred from conducting any sort of activity
in the area’s waters, with the warning that they were trespassing.
Now, having gotten “some serious money,” Browne alleges, Yida has
packed up and left, and the project, as the people knew it, seems to
be no more.

Accordingly, Browne predicts that the much-touted economic boost
that should have been derived from the project will not materialize
any time soon.

Given the project’s failure to materialize, the UPP senator says that
someone should be charged for this big misstep with the people ‘s
patrimony. 

He notes that it will not happen under the Gaston Browne
Administration; but a UPP government, for the sake of the people,
would be willing to commission an investigation.