Economic and Financial Review - June 2019

June 2019 Economic and Financial Review SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES

grains, beverages and building materials sub-sectors, is estimated to have expanded. The production of flour rose by 1.0 per cent, coupled with increases in feeds and rice of 39.8 per cent and 53.0 per cent respectively. The output of building materials was also estimated to have expanded. These gains were partly dampened by contractions in the production of beer which was evidenced by a 6.3 per cent decline in beer production. Activity in the hotels and restaurants sector advanced in the first half of 2019 on the strength of improvements in the number of visitor arrivals. Total visitor arrivals rose by 8.1 per cent to 245,983, a marked deceleration from the 51.3 per cent pace of expansion in the corresponding period of 2018. The lower rate of expansion partly reflected a normalization in the increase in total visitors after a surge in cruise passengers in 2018. Stay-over arrivals advanced by 7.7 per cent to 43,530, facilitated by the ongoing impact of the new Argyle International Airport which was commissioned in 2017.

The performance of the stay-over visitors’ category represented an improvement over the 6.3 per cent increase in the first six months of 2018. The expansion in stay-over arrivals was attributed to gains in arrivals from the all of the main source markets except the Caribbean. The number of stay- over visitors from the United States of America, which accounted for 36.7 per cent of total stay-over arrivals, rose by 13.9 per cent, slightly slower than the rate of increase in the previous year. Expansions were also recorded for the Canadian and United Kingdom markets of 17.9 per cent and 7.6 per cent respectively. Higher stay-over visitors from source markets in the USA and Canada were fuelled by the introduction of a weekly flight from New York by Caribbean Airlines Ltd (CAL) and a winter service from Toronto by Air Canada Rouge. The performance of the UK market was hamstrung by ongoing uncertainty in the UK associated with Brexit, and the protracted closure of the Buccament Bay Resort since 2016. Conversely, visitor arrivals from the Caribbean, the second largest market, fell by 6.7 per cent, representing a second consecutive year of decline.

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Eastern Caribbean Central Bank