Annual Economic and Financial Review -December 2018

2018 Annual Economic and Financial Review ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA

23.1 per cent in 2017. The contribution of the sector to real GDP inched up to 13.7 per cent from 12.2 per cent in 2017, maintaining its status as the second largest contributor to GDP. Construction activity was driven by both public and private sector investments. Public sector projects included the Government Affordable Housing Development, repairs and enhancements to government administrative offices and schools, dredging of the Heritage Quay Pier, and the road infrastructure project funded with the United Kingdom Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UK- CIF). Construction activity in the private sector included capital investments in hotel projects such as Pearns Point, Non Such Bay, Royalton, Hodges Bay Resort and Spa, Jumby Bay, and Galley Bay Resort and Spa, among others. The robust activity in the construction sector, increased the demand for sand and stones aggregates, leading to a 22.0 per cent expansion in the mining and quarrying sector. The hotels and restaurants sector, a proxy for the tourism industry, grew by an estimated 5.2 per cent reversing the contraction of 2.0 per cent recorded in 2017.

The hotels and restaurants sector contribution to GDP fell slightly to 13.5 per cent from 13.7 per cent in 2017. For the second consecutive year, Antigua and Barbuda recorded total visitor numbers in excess of one million (1.0m). Total visitor arrivals increased by 7.5 per cent to 1.1m, contributing to a 7.6 per cent surge in visitor expenditure to $1,616.9m. Cruise passenger arrivals, which accounted for 74.1 per cent of the total, rose by 7.4 per cent to 825,420 in 2018. This was mainly attributable to visits of larger capacity ships, which was made possible by the improvement in the cruise port infrastructure, notwithstanding the decline in the number of cruise ship calls to 379 from 424 in 2017. There was also solid growth in the number of stay over arrivals, which increased by 8.8 per cent to 268,949, relative to 2017. This outturn was largely due to the combined effect of increased airlift by American Airlines, Delta, Thomas Cook, Air

______________________________________________________________________________ 34 Eastern Caribbean Central Bank