Q&A > Peter Sinon - Minister of Investment, Natural Resources and Industry
| February 2nd, 2012
The Report Company: What have been the most 'non-negotiable' objectives and the milestones of your mandate so far?
Peter Sinon: The most important work that had to be done when I took on the ministry was the restructuring, because the ministry did not exist as it is now. Investment, natural resources and industry are now together and the main task was to get the key stakeholders of those ministries to gel together.
We were the first country in the Indian Ocean to sign the comprehensive Africa agriculture development program and, in terms of fisheries, we have sat down with the European Union and drawn up a development program with deadlines for projects that funds have been allocated for and we are up and ready to go.
We are regaining our status as the number one fishing industry in the Indian Ocean. We tranship the most fish, we have the largest tuna canning plant in the Indian Ocean and we are up to EU standards for our exports.
TRC: One of the government’s stated aims is to maintain Port Victoria as the major tuna landing and transhipment port in the Western Indian Ocean. How do you intend to do this, faced with strong competition from other Indian Ocean ports?
PS: We have one of the deepest ports of the Indian Ocean, which works 365 days a year. Port Victoria, unlike Mauritius, lies outside the cyclone belt and most importantly we have tuna in our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
TRC: How would you define your attitude towards the environment?
PS: Seychelles is very much into conservation and very environmentally conscious. I’ve noticed that as minister of investment, particularly when I went to cabinet with a €100m golf course project which took 20 minutes to be turned down. The reason was the environment. That golf course was going to be located in one of our major water catchment areas with a lot of endemic and rare species. This is the delicate tightrope we have to walk in maintaining the sea and land resources, maintaining the pristine environment and managing the stocks.
TRC: Piracy is a growing threat, particularly for the fishing industries, but also to the security of the region as a whole. How would you describe the effect of piracy on the country?
PS: Before this piracy business, a fisherman would not even tell his wife where he goes fishing. It’s a trade secret that has been passed down through generations. Piracy has changed all that. Now, every fishing boat wants a vessel monitoring system. They do it very reluctantly. It’s making the industry more expensive but we don’t want to cut costs in the factory as this may have consequences for standards and quality and we don’t want to trade that in. If there’s one thing we preserve, it’s the quality and the standard of our exports and that keeps the EU door open, and if you can export to the EU you can export anywhere.
TRC: What would you identify as key investment opportunities and potential for the UK investors in the fishing sector?
PS: Key areas exist in the industrial fishery itself. We would welcome processing ventures to process the fish and export them. We now have the right legislation and procedures to attract those industries to our shores.
TRC: The country has committed itself to supporting an investment friendly climate and has implemented very attractive fiscal regulations. What else makes the country attractive for investors?
PS: The country itself and its people. If you come to Seychelles, let alone the pristine environment and the beauty, you also will most probably find your culture represented as part of the Creole mix. The amazing thing about Seychellois is you can put us anywhere and we feel at home, and anyone who comes here feels at home because we’re a little bit of everything. We are the world. If you want us to be English we can be English, if you want somebody to speak to you in Japanese I could find someone. If you want someone who speaks Spanish to you I’ll find you someone.
Port Victoria is not only the fishing capital; it’s the Creole capital of the world. It’s the only place in the world where Creole is taught in schools. I think that’s a huge pull factor.
We have put a lot of effort into putting together a very attractive jurisdiction for business, we have SIBA that has done incredible work to promote the jurisdiction and to keep it on the OECD white list and this is something that we cannot afford to trade for any price. The financial sector has huge potential. We are discussing with potential investors about creating a stock and security market exchange in Seychelles and we would allow foreign companies to list on it. I promise that you will soon hear about us. Watch this space.
TRC: Seychelles is known as an offshore centre, but with that comes the moniker of “tax haven”. How do you manage Seychelles’ reputation to ensure it is still viewed as a high-quality investment destination?
PS: We are going to do that by making sure that we will not be the tax haven of zero tax. We will just charge less tax as a low tax jurisdiction.
TRC: Recent research has shown that Seychelles potentially has large offshore oil resources that have yet to be exploited. However, oil is both a blessing and curse – how do you plan to manage and grow this new industry in the most beneficial way?
PS: As the president said, when we do discover oil, it doesn’t mean we’ll have a party. We have to think of the next generation, we have to think of it as an insurance policy for us; we cannot allow it to be a curse. Central Bank staff members are taking courses on how to manage the inflows and we are looking at some best practices out there, for example Norway. I think it’s very important that we use any extra funds for promoting education, health, delivering housing to our people and to empower our people to be able to take up the opportunities at the higher end of our economy.
TRC: What are your future personal key objectives that you would like to achieve in your mandate?
PS: In fisheries we have made it, now our challenge is to remain at pole position. We have new challenges and new threats and we need to handle them with as much vigour and as many innovative approaches as we can.
As much as I am greatly support attracting FDI to Seychelles, I am also very concerned as to how we make it as easy for the Seychellois to do business as it is for foreigners, because you cannot have too much of a gap. The Seychellois must also feel that the business climate that they operate in is one that encourages them to invest even more and that we are doing the utmost to really make the private sector the dynamo, the engine that really drives growth and that the government facilitates and regulates. We know our place. Our business is to facilitate and regulate the operations so that we do things in a structured way, we maintain and conserve our environment and everybody’s happy.
If a private individual feels that his money will grow by investing in producing X in Seychelles, then that’s a decision and a risk they take, we will facilitate but it must conform to our environmental norms and safeguards. We take no prisoners on this one: we have a reputation to maintain and we would like to maintain pole position.
Seychelles is in a very strategic position. I know there are other financial centres calling themselves the gateway to Africa, but we are the stepping stone to Africa. We are granite and stable, we are solid as a rock.
Seychelles could be the stepping stone in terms of having a financial service platform where people could trade, companies could be listed, private equities could invest in Africa, venture capital could be formed here and I think once we have those we’ll be a real player but also a major contributor to a major deficiency on the continent. If we do develop this, it is not something we would want to keep for ourselves. Once it’s perfect, once it’s there, we could export to the continent and for me this is the best way I feel we can contribute and play a role in the process of regional integration. Stable countries in the region are important for our own stability and growth.
As far as UK investors are concerned, our jurisdiction is well positioned and politically affiliated to the continent and it’s a good place to be with a good quality of life. We are not out to compete with Jersey and Guernsey, we compete against ourselves, against what we are today and what we can be tomorrow and the name of the game is to improve every day and that’s it, that’s our biggest ambition.
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