The Seychelles Column - By Christopher Gill

                        Carnival De Crisis Floating In

No sooner then the Carnival De Carnival was finished, Alain St. Ange, was off to ITB to promote Seychelles as a destination. St.Ange is doing the hustle for Seychelles, and we must all support his efforts.

In a meeting with IMF last year, St. Ange and I pleaded with the IMF to pressure Government of Seychelles for the Tourism Marketing budget he needed. He got most of it, and he is stretching every Rupee he can stretch to make up for what he did not get. Hat’s off to Alain St. Ange.

St. Ange and the entire Tourism Trade, Government and the IMF are looking to Tourism to pull through to bring in the numbers- to propel Seychelles out of national bankruptcy. Every chance he gets, St. Ange applauds the record breaking Arrivals for the World to take notice of the Seychelles. It is not many Arrivals, in fact, a mere 174,600 in 2010. But it is an improvement. That is big news not just for Seychelles, but for the World.

The point is that St. Ange’s tenacious character and individual drive is what brought in the numbers, when many destinations were experiencing a severe downturn in Arrivals. We did much worse under the Haut de Gamme destination banner of Lousteau Lallane and worse under the black and white paradise of Francis Savy in the best of the good times.

Air Seychelles Expands To Falkland Islands…oops!

As Air Seychelles started to fly to the Falklands in 2010, and maintain Four (4)  weekly flights to Mauritius with 60% pre-sold seats to Air Mauritius for Mauritius bound travelers out of Heathrow and Gatwick, St. Ange approached Emirates, Austral, Kenya Airways, and any other airline he could, pleading with them to increase their presence in Seychelles. He did this on behalf of the Tourism Trade and Seychelles, not SPPF-PL or any political party.

At the time, SPPF PL was vacillating between protecting Col. David Savy, Rajiv and helping Captain Adam get Ephelia to float for himself, keeping Eden Island afloat above water in an endless effort of favoritism and cronyism that translated into discriminatory practice against the whole Tourism Trade.

The results of St. Anges’ bold effort will likely save the Industry in 2011, in spite of the discriminatory practices of the Michel Administration the Trade faced and still faces. I urge the Trade to file a suit against the Michel Administration for discriminatory practice in violation of Article 27 Equal Protection Clause. The most hurt, have been Seychellois owned hotels.

IMF is aware of this policy malaise and will consider this mis-step as it assess Seychelles challenges and forecast it’s future when it releases another installment under its administration.

Emirates have increased flights from Dubai from Three (3) flights a week, to Seven (7) flights a week, to Ten (10) flights a week. By the end of the year, they have committed Fourteen (14) flights a week, Two (2) flights a day.

Qatar Airways has started to run larger planes to Seychelles. Additional flights may soon follow.

Air Austral was gone, now it is back as a partner with Seychelles, looking for opportunities to expand further.

Perhaps St. Ange will be able to lure Virgin, or British Airways back or maybe even South African Airways.

At the same time interest was being sparkled in the Seychelles routes, Air Seychelles signed another year contract to fly to the Falkland Islands with the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom. James Michel called this a success and a bold new effort on part of the now departed CEO and Chairman of the carrier.

Excessive flights to Mauritius were continued and a new contractors-worker flight to Chennai, India without any Tourism promotions for that market. The Dream liner never came as promised in two elections, but one Twin Otter new, arrived this year, and cost $3 Million, a bit above what was anticipated.

By the time the Twin Otter arrived, Ravij was out and Col. Savy followed soon before the new Twin Otter could be painted with the Air Seychelles logo.

We are waiting for audits of Air Seychelles to be made public and appropriate charges filed against anyone who may have misused funds of the carrier. We are also waiting for the appointment of serious leadership at the national air carrier helm, to save her, save our image as a Country and save her nearly  700 staff that rely on Air Seychelles, for their bread and butter.

Not a day passes that I do not think of these staff at Air Seychelles. I am most certain documents are being shredded for the next Three (3) months to cover up what has passed.

2011 IMF Delegation Meeting

This week, I met with IMF as the delegation led by Mr. Le Dem returned to Seychelles to assess our progress after One (1) year. It does not look as rosy as Michel and company make it all out to be.

While Michel has paid for a Four (4) page advertisement in the Economist this week, to promote his government’s effort to come out of BANKRUPTCY, the IMF dished out the reality beyond the gloss.

IMF says that it “appears” our receivables in Tourism, the “National Yield”, is in fact -15%, after achieving a record breaking Arrival figure in 2010.

While External Debt has received a hair cut, and partially pardoned and reduced just under $500 Million from $870 Million, our Domestic Debt with commercial Banks that sits around Sr. 1.7 Billion is still high. Interest rates of Central Bank Bonds remain below 1%. Banks do not want to give the Domestic Debt a hair cut because they feel they have already taken it in the pants with the devaluation of the Seychelles Rupee.

Low bond rates should have encouraged the commercial Banks to start lending to stimulate more liquidity and activity in the economy, but it has not happened and beyond what Khalifa is doing we are experiencing a deflationary phenomena that is about to be replaced with hyperinflation another extreme.

Banks are still holding on tightly to cash. Growth of 6% has been mainly from Khalifa’s interventions in 2010. The IMF will not go down that road officially. They believe that this is an internal matter for Seychellois to resolve. It will take time but it will be resolved.

Piracy Plague Continues

In addition to lower receivables, we continue to be plagued with piracy attacks in our waters. While our waters are 1.2 million square kilometers, and 99% of the attacks are very, very far off from Mahe, Praslin and La Digue, they are not far from Desroches Island, Alphonse Island, which we hear little about these days.

The Amirantes Group run mainly by Glenny Savy and IDC are in fact close to the pirate attacks. I have been told Savy is training his own troops to defend pirate attacks. Perhaps he can confirm or deny this information and allegation in the Public Interest.

Seven Hundred (700) hostages remain in custody of the pirates and nearly 100 ships held. Seychelles needs to engage the commitment and assistance of solid democratic states and not solicit the help of rogue states or authoritarian regimes.

The PL had made a request to Col. Muammar Gaddafi last year to help in the fight against piracy. Thankfully Col. Gaddafi’s regime was slow to respond. What if Col. Gaddafi had become a main source of assistance today, in the fight against piracy today? We would be in trouble, indeed.

PL bad judgment always cost the People of Seychelles. This time, we were lucky, their wishes were not granted so fast.

Seychelles must engage respectable states that have a dominant permanent role in the region. This includes first India, USA, UK, France EU, and Spain. The recent assistance of India in providing surveillance plane is most welcome. Similarly, the coastal surveillance boats the UK gifted is most welcome. The gifts of boats and base from the UAE, an authoritarian regime, who’s own people have petitioned for free elections this very week, are not welcome in today’s World.

Countries that are stable and respect democratic norms are the best partners we must engage in the long fight against piracy in the region. It is reasonable to assume, that they will be solid partners down the road in the fight against piracy on the high seas, and on the ground in Somalia to establish order and structure. Protests in their streets will not jeopardize their contribution to the anti piracy campaign. Their leaders will not give orders to the Army to shoot their own people. In any case, the army of matured democracies would never follow such an order. In Seychelles, we must move towards democratic maturity to the point that the Army does refuse to shoot any Seychellois.

The Army must defend our territory, not keep it for a dictator, Mr. Govinden.

Water Crisis Goes Year Round

The water crisis use to be a seasonal crisis. With demand pressure from Eden Island and Sheik Khalifa’s residence and workers  on Mahe, Raffles on Praslin, and bore holes exhausted on La Digue, the water crisis is becoming a year long issue that threatens the viability of the Tourism Industry.

We must all call upon IMF to allow Seychelles to borrow sufficient funds to rectify this crisis issue. Funding for water catchments, water production and transfer, treatment is needed as a matter of urgency and we are facing a crisis that will affect the national bottom line, if nothing is done.  How much in refunds will hotels have to give to guests because there is not enough water? How much money must we spend on auxiliary catchments, that we could have spent on guest comfort or solar energy or even double glazed windows?

Seychelles today, cannot grow further without more water storage capacity. Government has failed generations when they failed to meet the water requirements of the country over the years.

They have failed us when they fooled us with AutoCAD computer layouts of plans that never materialized in the same time. They were all just pictures of a dream is what they did for us and ran on SBC to fool the simple minded.

Each time a Seychellois carries a bucket of water, or bathes with a bottle of trucked water, the PL have failed all of us. Each time we must smell the stench of sewage on Mahe the PL fail us. Each time we loose a fridge, or TV  to power surge, PL fails us.  Add it up PL. Add the failure, then tell us the results.

Crisis Beyond Our Shores

As I write this article, the people of Japan are facing a Tsunami of record size. The world’s third (3^rd) largest economy is near declaration of State of Emergency and may take the World into a double dip –tip recession, just when we thought we were coming out of the worse recession since the Great Depression.

At the same time, countless neighbors in the Middle East are fighting for greater rights and civil strife for democratic process is in play. Libya has become a war zone. Other Middle East states may follow. The price of fuel will soar in July as demand peaks and supply will be short fallen if production lags in the region.

These two crisis will reach our shores through decline in demand for paradise holidays and significant increase in the cost of living as I said in late 2010. At the time, Danny Faure, Vice President, said,” we do not know, we will have to wait and see”. Well Mr. Faure, foresight is the mother of prevention, in case you did not learn that while taking lessons from Rene or Castro.

As a consequence of price increases and instability in the region, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) will plunge beyond Michel’s wishful figures declared in his State of The Nation address. His figures are always off 1 or 2 Billion Dollars at a time.

We have seen Pinnacle properties disappear, and Eden Island is slugging it out, without success and will become Vijay Eden, then Seychelles Eden. Each day, less yachts dock at Eden, sales of villas are dropping as fast as flies to a Doom can. After the villa sales stagnate, Eden may start a used golf cart lot for sale of refurbished golf carts, possibly. By that time, Craig Heegar will be gone. We will still be here, like we were here in 1974, 1984, 1994, 2004.

If St. Ange thought last year was tough, 2011 will be even tougher. 2012 will not be easier. His contract is up and Government must sign him up again.

As long as St. Ange stands up for the Trade, we must all stand up for St. Ange.

To those kankan mongers attacking the man, be advised that St. Ange does not work for James Michel…….., he has to work with James Michel and Michel has to work with St. Ange!

The reasons are obvious.

Thank you for all you have done for the Trade and all of Seychelles-Alain, you have allowed us to side step the deluge for now!

I did not see Albert Rene in the parade.

SESEL POU SESELWA!

May God Bless All Freedom Loving Seychellois!