The deputy chairman of the Barbuda Council has said that funding and construction agreements are now in place for a multi-million dollar port on the sister isle.

A cloud of doubt remains over when top officials from Antigua and sister isle Barbuda will sit down to hammer out critical details regarding the relation between the two islands.

A review of the Barbuda economy is in the cards as council members seek earnestly to jumpstart economic growth.

A former member of the Barbuda Council has joined MP for the sister isle Trevor Walker in his call for central government to investigate the financial operations of the Council.

Chairman of the opposition Antigua Labour Party (ALP) Gaston Browne said Antigua & Barbuda Investment Bank’s (ABIB) financial woes have been an “open secret” for at least two years and the government should have intervened sooner.

The Barbuda’s People Movement (BPM) is planning to use its close relationship with the ruling United Progressive Party (UPP) as their trump card in upcoming council elections next month.

More than 17 years after the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court ruled that two sand-mining companies should pay Barbuda Council $7.2 million, Senator McKenzie Frank told the Upper House yesterday that the island was in dire straits and could do well with the money.

An opposition parliamentarian has proposed the government offer the 49 per cent stake in State Insurance that it intends to sell to Social Security to settle its multi-million dollar debt with the statutory body.

Member of Parliament for Barbuda Trevor Walker has called for Barbuda Council to be downsized and restructured.

An uneasy armistice should be underway from today at the Free Trade and Processing Zone, where workers have been resisting plans to reduce their hours and by extension their pay throughout 2011.