November 2013
| Business World Magazine | 141
Einstein once referred to bureaucracy as the death of all sound work. For one British
territory in the Caribbean, the strategy to strengthen the economy through advance-
ments in airport and seaport operations has led to the empowering of a new authority
with a vision for the future that focuses on greater cooperation with the private sector
and greater freedom from local bureaucracy.
Among the most northerly of the Leeward
Islands in the Lesser Antilles, Anguilla is the
largest in a composite of small islands and
cays that collectively comprise a British Ter-
ritory populated by some 15,000 people. In
addition to supporting a thriving financial
services, private banking and captive insur-
ance industry, Anguilla’s economy has long
benefitted from tourists drawn to the div-
ing, the fishing and the basking within the
beauty of the local beaches. The airport and
seaport have been crucial to facilitating the
flow of tourism dollars, yet over time, an-
other industry has developed in the form of
ferry boat operators who transport passen-
gers from one island to the next; visitors can
even hop aboard a ferry and venture to near-
by St. Martin in all of 20 minutes. For all of
its island hospitality and imparting of happy
memories for tourists, Anguilla has endured
through a series of impacts seeming intent to
stymie its economic sustainability. Those im-
pacts have included former onslaughts from
passing hurricanes as well as another kind of
storm that precipitates from fiscal concerns
and issues emerging from the interplay be-
tween local government and British gover-
nance. As a tax haven, the absence of capital
gains and inability to collect on any form of
direct taxation has contributed to increasing
deficits, and to correct course, the govern-
ment here moved to introduce what it re-
ferred to as the “Interim Stabilization Levy”
in 2011. Valued at 3%, this was the first form
of income tax in Anguilla. Yet, even prior to
this enactment, the government came to a
realization that it could not, through its own
means, effect the kind of changes necessary
to assure the fiscal sustainability (or profit-
ability) of its air and seaport operations,
which again, are extremely vital to the entire
local economy. Resolving to step back from
these functions, in 2009 the Government of
Anguilla officially turned over the depart-
ment of air and sea ports to what is known
today as the Anguilla Air and Sea Port Au-
thority (AASPA).
Port Manager Joseph Rogers says the
