The Physical Planning Unit has taken measures to rectify longstanding complaints from builders and others involved in the construction industry.
The complaint of the slow processing of building permits has been identified as a burning issue in Grenada and other countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).
It was one of the topics discussed recently in St. Vincent at a “Special Meeting on the OECS Construction Sector.’’ The meeting was attended by Hon. Joseph Gilbert, Grenada’s Minister for Works, Physical Development and the Environment.
Minister Gilbert said that in the case of Grenada, the rate of approval for building permits has improved tremendously under the current National Democratic Congress administration which took office nine months ago.
He said that out of a total of 168 applications received between November 2008 and March 2009, 166 applications were approved.
The meeting in St. Vincent, the first of its kind in the sub-region, involved officials from OECS ministries of finance, housing and works. There were also representatives from the OECS Secretariat, the private sector, Caribbean Development Bank and the East Caribbean Central Bank.
According to Minister Gilbert, the main objective of the meeting was to “craft a strategy for ensuring the continued growth and dynamism of the construction sector in the OECS, in light of the present global financial and economic crisis facing international capitalism.’’
The construction sector has moved from the seventh largest contributor to the GDP in 1978 to the second contributor to the economic growth in the OECS in 2008.
The sector, however, has been negatively affected by global and regional factors including the price of construction materials, periodic shortage of cement in the region, lack of land policies and the slow processing of building permits in some countries.
The meeting recommended that “urgent measures’’ be taken to “augment the supply of trained persons’’ in the construction industry.
Among the specific recommendations, during what was described as “this period of dampened construction-sector activity,’’ is the importance of offering certified training to
“small contractors, artisans and semi-skilled workers in the industry, and upgrading their technical as well as their business management capabilities.’’