Business View Caribbean - Sept. / Oct. 2014

%XVLQHVV 9LHZ ‡ &DULEEHDQ ² 6HSWHPEHU ‡ 2FWREHU 86 9LUJLQ ,VODQGV BUSINESS VIEW: Give me your perspective on an overview of the VIEDA and some of your current priorities. MERLE FENTON-CAMERON: The main goals of the VIEDA are to stimulate our local economy by creating more tax-based revenue and to find innovative ways to create job opportunities for our residents. The two main ways that we accomplish our goals is we promote local economic development strategies in a coordinated multi-faceted effort. We use services like Mr. Clutz of Oxford Intelligence, who currently serves as our marketing consultant, to reach the national and global markets with a focus of capitalizing on certain industry sectors and business structures that we find are the most beneficial in our community based on our infrastructure and current workforce. ANDREW CLUTZ: We continue to build on the strong financial services and diversified services that we have, as well as attract additional high-value manufacturing companies into the territory. We have been the beneficiary of a U.S. government grant as part of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program that has now been built into all three islands – St. John, St. Thomas and St. Croix – with middle mile fiber rings. This resulted in a construction of a world-class fiber network in which anyone can operate a remote broadband business anywhere in the territory with the high speeds that you would have in New York or San Francisco, allowing for much more remote business activity, whether it’s creative centers, e-business, financial services, trading, or other activities. We’re leveraging a lot on that. We have two expectations from this initiative. One is to bring external businesses into the territory in some of those sectors, and two, we expect to grow our own indigenous businesses. This brings me to another new initiative which is an official VIEDA incubator program on St. Croix to help budding and existing small businesses receive training, technical support and consultation services. We also work in conjunction with the Department of Labor and the University of the Virgin Islands, creating training programs which help Talking Business: Merle Fenton-Cameron and Andrew Clutz 30 minutes with the United States Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority 86 9LUJLQ ,VODQGV 6HSWHPEHU ‡ 2FWREHU ² &DULEEHDQ ‡ %XVLQHVV 9LHZ individuals get technical skills related to programming and database support that one can do remotely as an individual and perhaps not necessarily work for a brick- and-mortar company in the territory, but perhaps for an online companies such as Sales Force and Amazon, or any other e-company that you can think of. BV: You mentioned St. Croix, and I think maybe we should focus on St. Croix for a little bit, because it seems to me that there’s a hub of activity taking place there and I read about this incredible industrial park that you have. There’s also incredible potential for that deep water port. There’s a lot of energy surrounding expanding on what’s available in St. Croix. FENTON-CAMERON: That is correct! One of the things that Andrew mentioned is our Incubator Program, and that benefits both local and incoming businesses alike, because what is provided through the incubator program is the technical assistance. We realize that we have to make sure that the workforce, and other support systems are continually built on relevant information and that starts with the human element. So, what we provide through this program is the technical assistance such as legal advice, tax assistance, and many other assistance features that help entrepreneurs develop their businesses and service offerings. Thenwehave theexpectedexpansioncorresponding with the Post-Panamax transition. With the Panama Canal expanding and the potential growth in the size of the vessels and the overall shift in container traffic volumes, we like many others are hoping to capitalize on that with the use of 200-plus acres of property on St. Croix - to include the Renaissance Park and the Port Authority facilities. CLUTZ: It’s really a public-private partnership and obviously the Panama Canal expansion creates not only opportunities, but changes in the dynamics of the way shipping will occur in the next 10 to 20 years. While we don’t expect to be a main line hub/port, such as Panama, the Dominican Republic or Jamaica; we do expect that our new initiative of merging these properties will fit in very well in the overall logistics chain. So, really a full-blown mixed use facility that will also include industrial activity, some existing and some new, whereby we can leverage the port operations for those industrial activities, whether it’s maintenance and overhaul for ships, or some sort of heavy duty manufacturing. BV: You mentioned public and private partnerships. It seems that’s something you could point to as an example of how this strategy is working. Do you look at it that way? CLUTZ: There’s talk about other refining activities, some additional bulk refining activities, or distilling activities, that may come in to complement what’s happening at Diageo/Captain Morgan, as well as our own Cruzan rum, which is a great brand itself and is run by Jim Beam, which was recently acquired by Suntory Holdings, Ltd. One other thing just to note, in terms of looking at turnkey activity is that we even have a company called Tibbar Energy right now that has received a power purchase agreement from our utility to produce base-load electricity, based on the growth of king grass. This grass grows very nicely - about 12 feet tall, resulting in four cuts a year. This is basically bio-fuel/bio-electricity. The community is thinking about its challenges, but also about the opportunities, and looking to become more efficient with every piece and element residing within St. Croix, as well as the rest of the Territory for that matter. BV: It’s not only a job creator – that would provide a means for a number of companies to reduce their carbon footprint and advance on sustainability practices that are crucial to the environment. FENTON-CAMERON: Very true. CLUTZ: And the nice thing is that it’s not intermittent like solar or wind – it’s base-load power, so it’s 100-percent reliable. It’s one thing when you live in the continental U.S. and you have a massive grid to broker energy from here to there. You can have all kinds of different energy sources. When you live on an island, you only have two mini-grids, as St. Thomas and St. John are connected. So you can’t produce too much and you can’t produce too little; it has to be just